… the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

Mann, as you may recall, was a key figure in the so-called Climategate fiasco, where leaked emails were purported to show scientists fixing data to make global warming evidence appear stronger. Since Day 1 of this I have been calling it a non-event, a manufactured controversy by global warming denialists trying to make enough noise to drown out any real talk on this topic. And time and time again I have been shown to be correct.

This conclusion by the committee is yet another nail in Climategate’s coffin.

But let me be clear: that has almost no bearing on what the denialists will say or do. They will continue to beat this drum, have no doubt. Climategate may be dead, but the zombie attacks will continue.
Case in point: I have written several times about Virginia State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who wants to waste taxpayers’ money investigating the work Dr. Mann did while he was at the University of Virginia. UVa is fighting these charges. They petitioned a judge to set aside Cuccinelli’s subpoena for records from that time.

The Union of Concerned Scientists just put out a press release saying that Cuccinelli’s response to that petition has serious and critical factual errors:

Cuccinelli’s response acknowledges the existence of investigations that have cleared Mann and other scientists of misconduct charges stemming from emails stolen from a British university last year, claiming those investigations "speak for themselves." But Cuccinelli’s response repeats misleading claims to justify his subpoena, despite the fact that the investigations he referenced debunked the claims he is making. Furthermore, he gets basic facts wrong about the content of the emails.

Wow. You’d almost think Cuccinelli has some sort of agenda he’s pushing. As I’ve pointed out in the links above, Cuccinelli’s investigation has all the hallmarks of a political witchhunt, and I strongly suspect these new conclusions clearing Mann of any academic wrongdoing will not stop the Attorney General.

Nor will it stop the deniers at large. Expect the comments below to be filled with changing goalposts, poisoning of the well (something along the lines of "scientists shouldn’t be investigating scientists", even though what they were investigating was Dr. Mann’s scientific conduct), distractions, diversions, and just general noise — anything to bury the cold fact that the scientists involved with modeling global warming did not cheat, did not fake any data, and the bigger issue that climate change is real.

I will just add that here in Oklahoma, our loving and wise (sarcasm!) Senator Jim Inhoffe recently stated at a town hall meeting in Perry, OK that he felt “vindicated” regarding Climategate. As mad as that made me, it makes me even madder to know that there is nothing. . .NOTHING. . .that can be said to change his mind. No matter how much evidence is shown to him, he will still continue to believe that this is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated” on the American people. And that just makes me sad. And mad all over again.

Every time I read one of your well-thought out refutations of some non-issue of controversy (vaccinations, global warming, the Founding Fathers created a Christian nation, etc), and I think, “there’s no possible way the denialists can see through this one!”, I am surprised yet again by the steadfast refusal of the denialists to so much as acknowledge anything resembling logic, coherent thought, or even common sense.

You know Phil should just stick to astronomy and stop these biased post towards science and skepticism. I am sick and tired of hearing about how pseudoscience is killing babies in Australia. Enough about Doctor stinking Who, who cares about that outdated silly show. Wil Wheaton is an over rated actor. What we need is more about scientist are trying to turn the US into a socialist country with their silly rules and regulations. We need more science based on the mommy instinct and teaching that the Earth is only 6000 years old.

The May/June issue of Skeptical Inquirer has some good followup on the whole climate kerfuffle. What’s sad is that even those who are normally quite skeptical in approaching a variety of subjects have blinders on when it comes to climate. Folks like Robert Sheafer who pretty vociferously supports the idea that Climategate shows that AGW is wrong. I keep wondering if the next issue of SI will have a letter from him admitting that he was mistaken in a number of his claims.

I guess this is just a lesson that no matter how skeptical we might think we are, we are still susceptible to having our sacred cows and blinding ourselves to that which contradicts our preconceptions.

@Todd W. It’s “I know more than the experts because I’m smart!” people like Shaefer that caused me to stop reading the Skeptical Inquirer years ago. Sad, as it was once quite respectable and well thought out. As I and others here have said before: “with friends like this…..

When you repeat gossip, even to show that it is false, you are helping denialists spread a message, because people end up remembering “read something” … “believable source” … “about climate science” … “scientist had to go to court” … the point is that in language and memory, phrases like “did not cheat” end up with the word “not” removed from memory. I’d suggest focus on what people did, as, “conducted legitimate and credible research” when refuting denialist claims, if you give them any air-time at all.

Maybe we can now get on to the real issues that need to be debated, but I suppose not. While we are wading around trying to just get just this bare fact on the board :”its getting warmer”; discussions like ‘WTF are we going to do about it’ get derailed by idiots who are still arguing that its not even real.

100 years from now, this age (not sure that’s the right word) will be mocked and hated by the future for not being able to get our acts together on this one vital thing.

Most climate change deniers don’t even consider this to be a debate anymore. Climategate proved once and for all that climate change is a hoax, and that’s that. They know what they know, don’t bother them with facts.

Haha, “any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices”, want any more qualifications?

a) Are the accepted practices any good to start with?
b) How far do you have to deviate before you’ve “seriously” deviated? I guess it’s ok to jokingly deviate, but just don’t seriously deviate
c) The investigation was conducted by a University, there couldn’t possible be any bias there, noohhh.
d) Why would a hypothesis, so concrete, so sound, so irrefutable ever have anyone say anything remotely like “trick” and “hide the decline”?

And I’ve got to love how “denialists” are pushing an agenda, but warmenists aren’t.

Climategate isn’t dead, it did exactly what it need to: Prove that there is a debate to be had. Anyone who argues that climategate is about proving there’s no global warming is an idiot, what it does is prove that there are 2 sides.

It’s all irrelevant anyway. All over the world the public has moved on. Global warming has gone from being the no. 1 or 2 top concerns for people to not even being in the top 20. There’s no political will for action anymore, the CCX is at 10c, TEN CENTS! No one cares. The skeptics have won by default. But its ok, keep beating your “we’re all gonna die” drum, there’s still a few crazy hippies who still like listening.

I used to love the idea of the paranormal, and I really did hope it was true. I went to hundreds of websites, read tonnes of books, but all the great scientific sounding claims turned out to be false. So I became skeptical about it.

I used to hope that global warming would be explained by reasonable phenomena and that our current age of prosperity and development would continue without hinderance or difficulty. I went to hundreds of websites and read… well, a few books, but all the great looking claims turned out to be false. So I became skeptical about it.

I don’t like being a skeptic about everything, but the more I try not to be the more it seems I should.

I think there’s a lot of work science-based skeptics can do to help beat back the anti-science on climate change. I’m happy that you keep posting on this topic. When a politician like Ken Cuccinelli attacks, we need citizens and scientists alike to stand up to them.

For Virginians, we also have a letter we’re still collecting signatures on asking Cuccinelli to knock it off. It’s open to Virginians who are scientists, engineers, public health professionals, and academic leaders: http://www.ucsusa.org/vascientistletter

The fact that you don’t understand the context in which “trick” and “hide the decline” was used simply backs up Phil’s entire point. You’re stamping your feet and making noise over a non-issue that you’ve misinterpreted. You’re inventing a controversy out of nothing.

I suggest you take the time to look into the context of those two phrases. Hints:

1) Was the word “trick” used to mean “deceit”? Or was it used to mean “technique” or “method”?

2) Does “hide the decline” refer to the measured average global temperatures? Or does it refer to something else?

I agree that this announcement doesn’t really mean much. The important issues that were raised were not the media-popular issues that most people were talking about anyway. I also agree that those were mostly nonsense. But that doesn’t really mean much either. So the nonsense objections were shot down. GOOD! But I still haven’t seen some of the real issues addressed at all. What I have seen is everyone concentrating on the nonsense, as though to distract from anything else. And that is a behavioral practice comparable to making “straw-man” arguments.

If nothing else, “climategate” was valuable precisely in that it showed that the particular “accepted practices” adhered to were shoddy at best. Rather than calling this a “victory” for “warmists”, scientists should hang their heads in shame for allowing such questionable and downright half-assed practices to become “accepted” at all. I mean come on, folks: attempting to use sophisticated statistical extrapolations (among other things), and claiming proofs (or at least strong evidence) based on them — for many years — without ONCE even having consulted a statistician about the validity of their methods? You have to be kidding me. “Accepted practice”? That sure as hell has to change. And to be sure, that has been admitted by the investigators… grudgingly and usually as a muttered sideline to the “main” issue.

So that is a positive effect. Or it should be… so far I haven’t seen the scientific community being very repentant. Sigh. But back to the things everyone — and I mean everyone, as far as I have been able to tell — on the AGW side of the argument has been ignoring:

Even if the methodologies used to establish the base data were sound, there is no doubt that it was later used improperly and irresponsibly. For months now, in these blog posts of Phil’s, I have asked anybody — ANYBODY — to refute what is on this page: When Results Go Bad.

I have had no takers. Not one. Anybody care to take a shot at it now? But I warn you ahead of time that if you attack the messenger rather than the message, I shall laugh at you.

There are other examples, but I have had no reason to even bring them up yet because nobody has refuted this one. I am still waiting.

No we skeptics haven’t won Luke @ 17…because there’s still kooks like you around who believe in such bogus claims. But we’ll keep shining our light in your demon haunted world of climate nuttery and denile.

No, I don’t, it’s called being a Professional. And I’ve read the many, many explanations, none of which made the claim look any less dodgy. The emails show a pattern of behaviour. Mann’s hockey stick was debunked by a retired engineer, and only after repeated attempts to get access to the data which was denied. The emails prove what’s going on, these frauds don’t want real analysis of their work, because the know of the tricks to hide the decline.

*sigh*. It’s quite simple. A person who believes in creation is called a creationist, a person who believes in a flat earth is called a flat earther, a person who believes there is no god is an atheist and a person who believes there is warming is called… a coldist?

@Luke, at #34,
A person who supports “x” is often an “x”-ist. A person who advocates resource conservation is called a conservationist. A person who paints in planes and geometric shapes is called a Cubist. A person who wants to keep climate stability is called … a warmist?

As I see it, the point is what people are advocating for, which makes the phrase “global warming advocate” (which I have seen) rather awkward. But perhaps the name “warmer” is supposed to conjure associations with “truther”, “birther”, and other kinds of “believer”. Is that it?

Also, an engineer is not a climatologist. Plus, you should cite sources before saying things like “only after repeated attempts to get access to the data which was denied”. Further, simple claims is not enough, you need to prove that the guy was denied the data, not just the man’s word.

I doubt you’ve even read those emails.

I’m still waiting for you to respond to this:

“@ Luke:
“d) Why would a hypothesis, so concrete, so sound, so irrefutable ever have anyone say anything remotely like “trick” and “hide the decline”?”

All we have to do, you see, is to create an investigation, headed by a Climate Change Denier!! Then, when the CCD comes to the conclusion that there was, in fact misconduct by EVERYONE connected with Climate Change, well, they’ll finally let it go!

The solution to climate change was so simple all along. Decades of research falsified by armchair pseudoscientists who found a typo here, a suspicious sentence structure there… and best of all, some emails that don’t even prove their case.

Problem gone. Maybe we can do the same to get rid of cancer? Let’s just deny it exists.

The data that were “faked” were mathematical proxies used in computer modeling; the data extrapolated from the models weren’t consistant with observable fact, so some of the factoring had to be changed to make the models consistant with observed data. That’s not faking.
As far as denying access to data goes, the modeling software used was proprietary and developed for the use of the team conducting the research, so check that off the list. The data was as yet inconclusive because the modeling was still being worked on to make make it line up with observable data; check that off the list.

It seems like heaping, but here we go anyway. You’re straw-manning the researchers, most specifically Mann. That’s no good. Who is this retired engineer, and is he a qualified climate scientist? I’m a practicing engineer, and I can tell you with great confidence that I am not qualified to make such an assessment.

Finally, and most vehemently, the only agenda “warmerists” have is to the truth. The planet is warming up. The sooner we can at least agree that capping emissions is a good start, then we can work on ways to get rid of what’s already in the atmosphere.

You make no sense. The reason I didn’t reply wasn’t because it would “hurt” my argument, but that yours is incoherent. Nevertheless, I shall try.

“- And a person who believes there is a god is a theist.” Correct. Were you trying to argue for my point or against it. I’m simplify even further. A… person… who… believes… in… warming… is… a… warmist. Clear?

“- See creationists, Intelligent Design proponents, Flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and Moon Landing Hoaxers.” Are you saying these people use “tricks”, or are you saying they claim their opponents use “tricks”? Either way its simple deflection, one of the last resorts of a losing argument.

“Also, an engineer is not a climatologist.” Correct, that adds to my argument. Someone who is not even a climatologist was able to debunk Mann’s hockey stick, and yet all these so-called brilliant, infallible climatologists couldn’t see any problem with it. Goes to the heart of the AGW hypothesis, it’s group-think. Not surprising seeing as the funding flows in that direction.

@GK4 Ok, fair enough. But then what are “deniers” denying? And why call them deniers if you’re not trying to link them with moon landing deniers, holocaust deniers etc. If you’re going to use denier, which is to deny warming, then the opposite has to be to believe warming, thus, you’re a warmist.

btw resource conservation works really well in Africa. They hardly use any resources at all. True, they starve to death, die of diseases we eliminated decades ago and live lives you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, but hey, who cares so long as resources are conserved, right?

– Did you read the emails in context, all the way through? Unless you did you really have no place talking about them saying “hide the decline” and “trick”…further…cite which email said that. And I’m talking about the ACTUAL emails, not from a denialist website.

I brought up the creationists, ID proponents, Flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers and Moon Landing hoaxers because what tactics you are using against climatologists is PRECISELY what they use against evolutionary biologists, chemists, physicists, microbiologists, virologists, astronomers and NASA engineers. You are using their tactics, dismissing real evidence because you don’t believe it, you think it’s all lies.

That is the hallmark of those movements, and the climate change denialist movement.

Yes, an engineer and not a climatologists. That means he doesn’t have expertise in that field, and is not familiar with the operations of climates as well as the climatologist. Did he really debunk it? Or do you want to believe he debunked it. And again you did not provide a source citation for that statement. Who was this engineer, when did he do this debunking, and was he indeed denied data? You provide no facts to back up your claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Global warming deniers ARE deniers because they are denying concrete science.

As for your last paragraph (about “resource conservation in Africa), strawman. Besides, that analysis isn’t even remotely accurate of conditions in Africa. There is no resource conservation going on in Africa, it’s simply a case of the poor not getting what they need.

Are you really that unfamiliar with Mann’s hockey stick debunking? If so, you clearly don’t follow this issue very closely at all. 5 seconds in google and you’ll have thousands of links to whatever information you would like about the debunking of the hockey stick. As to whether or not it was actually debunked, it was in the IPCC’s 3rd report but mysteriously vanished from the 4th report, that’s debunked enough for me. I guess the question is, is it really debunked, or do you just want to keep believing it’s not debunked.

Oh, and warmenists hypothesis getting debunked is hardly extraordinary. It’s almost a daily occurrence. But that’s ok, you hold onto your faith. And the more evidence that shows it’s not true, you make sure you hold on even tighter!

I want to see a scientist debunk it, not “thousands of links”. I want to see someone with a background in climatology debunk it. I have no seen that.

I have not seen appropriate evidence suggesting it is debunked. I have seen evidence that it has been modified with increased study, which are two entirely different things. The modification and perfection of the data set is not debunking, it is science in action.

“*sigh*. It’s quite simple. A person who believes in creation is called a creationist, a person who believes in a flat earth is called a flat earther, a person who believes there is no god is an atheist and a person who believes there is warming is called… a coldist?”

A coldist is better phrased as a AGW climate denialist. A warmists is a lame name that said denialist would classify a person who suspect our climate is warming. In doing so to descredit and marginalize their concerns (read: thought crime) by lumping them with other kooks (who ironically oft support the said denialist position). But I would of thought you would know that already.

Debunking climate change by siting a single source who you’ve admitted is a supposed armchair climatologist (read: engineer) is not really helping your cause either.

What I see when I search “hockey stick graph” is a large mixture of “It has been debunked” results, and articles by scientific magazines which directly cite scientific papers showing that it has not been found to be false, but has been bolstered. This is what I mean by reliable scientific sources, not just website links. Websites like this:

And until you can cite scientific articles, without taking statements inside them out of context, then I will not sit on your side of the fence, nor will any clear-minded individual. Until then you are making empty extraordinary claims, and not providing extraordinary evidence.

As much as I know that the irrational vilification of Mann by the deniers will never stop, I at least some day hope that they will be a little more honest.

MBH98 did not vanish from AR4. It is there with about 12 other reconstructions – all showing similar results in the section about temperature over the last 2000 years. If you go back and read Mann’s paper from 1998 you will see that in the very title he mentions that the data is inadequate with a lot of uncertainties but is improving over time. AR3 is similarly cautious, as is AR4, however to know such things it would help to read the reports instead of parroting what one hears Glenn Beck blab. It is also useful to understand that temperature reconstructions and models are just one small part of a massive body of evidence all pointing in one direction – and that is why the term denier is the only appropriate label.

In other news, the LA police investigation department has again dismissed all charges against the police department. The alleged victim shot himself in the back 3 times, just like in the report, they found.

After the hottest summer on record last year…I STILL have associates who say the earth was in a cooling trend the last 10 years, and that this winter proves it! I have looks of disbelief when I say this is the warmest 6 months ever recorded on earth in 2010…why does the3 media allow itself to be kowtowed into propagating news as if it was politics (Politics are allowed to make all kinds of baseless assumptions, statements, lies, and innuendos) and not do any real research or even help promote sound information and not op-ed as if they somehow became the gatekeepers of information to society…?????

I agree. In fact, it’s been changing in small ways and large ways ever since the planet gained an atmosphere. I hardly think that is even worth debating.

Whether it’s warming or cooling, or what the trend for the long term is, isn’t — nor has it ever been — a settled science. It’s a cliche` at this point but not many years ago, we were gonna be dead in an ice-age by now. Few years later, we were going to be dead in a hot-house by now. We were also going to kill off the oceans in 10 years, 30 years ago.

The only salient questions are: is the warming the cause of human activity? Frankly, this question is idiotic since the planet does it’s own thing all the time. Are we contributing? Technically, yes: every time you exhale even on CO2 atom or a molecule of water vapor (H2O) which traps even MORE heat or pass methane as a by-product of digestion, etc. Is that of a measurable impact? So far, I would have to say “No.” There reason is simple: no honest measurements have, to my knowledge, been published that show the differential between any speculated APG-caused warming vs environmental; many entirely environmental theories are utterly ignored — despite strong coupling evidence — in models in favor of assumptions; and so far, I’ve yet to see someone honestly show “x-volume of CO2 traps y-measurement of heat at z-pressure” or even accurately measure the carbon utilization footprint.

I’m all for a living-lighter-on-the-land living philosophy; I hate fossil fuels b/c they dump -actual- pollutants into the atmosphere; I hate current crop fertalization methods b/c of the problems it creates with nutrient run-off; on-and-on: and my politics are conservative. The issue at hand in this idiocy is that it isn’t raw science, it’s the politics-money-power trifecta. It is agenda driven and, in any rational analysis, would be as accepted as any group of studies that support the position of those that paid for it. Conclusions reached, supporting data sought: that isn’t science.

If tomorrow there were 20-year grants for study being handed out to every scientist who’s “proven anthroprogenic globoal warming,” and basically handed them a platform to advice on public policy for life, but this institution’s position was that APG was bunk, and that long-term warming itself was likely bunk, within a year 80% of them would find “serious flaws in earlier research” and the other 20% might step back and consider doing actual science by looking to prove or disprove other methods of ongoing climate variation.

Frankly, I wish someone would do that so we can separate the wheat (actual scientists) from the chaff (the grant-hounds).

“Global warming deniers ARE deniers because they are denying concrete science.”

…There’s nothing more dangerous than true-believers.

When you call a scientific skeptic a denier, you have abandoned rationality and delved into religion. Don your robes, I guess, and feel confident in your hate-mongering.

… the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

That pretty much says it all.

Will all fields now suffer? Will people assume that all research is conducted in the manner of ‘Climate Science’?

So far no reaction from the representatives & groups in Pennsylvania who demanded an thorough and independent investigation of Mann or the termination of Penn State funding. The whitewash is not even dry yet and the holiday weekend is almost here so I think it is prudent to wait a bit before we learn of Penn State’s fate.

With support for any kind of climate tax dwindling in the DNC dominated House/Senate/Whitehouse do we really have to worry with the changing of the guard in the house/senate coming in November?

Please read (especially the third) and understand before making statements like “no honest measurements have, to my knowledge, been published that show the differential between any speculated APG-caused warming vs environmental; many entirely environmental theories are utterly ignored — despite strong coupling evidence — in models in favor of assumptions; and so far, I’ve yet to see someone honestly show “x-volume of CO2 traps y-measurement of heat at z-pressure” or even accurately measure the carbon utilization footprint.”

Some bills should be pushed through despite the opinion of the general populace. Like Climate bills. The outcry over this situation– another example of pop-media run amok– is proof enough that the “teeming unwashed masses” have become too retarded to be trusted with something as important as lobbying or voting. It should be done in private for the good of everyone. They’ll thank us in 40 years when the oil runs out.

While I take umbrage with one of the words you used, I agree with you, to a point. The will of the people is important, to be sure, but there has to be a cutoff point. The will of the people cannot supercede the needs of the people, and it cannot be allowed to supercede the truth.

Can you clarify what you mean by “It should be done in private for the good of everyone?”

Val wins what? Must be the award for the wild-assed claims without any reference in the space of a paragraph. Produce ***any*** prognostication by any climate researcher that “we would be dead in an ice age now”, or, for that matter “we would be dead in a hot housed by now”.
Look up the claims made in the ’70s. For every claim that we would cool off, there was a claim that we would warm up. And there were a lot more that aid “we don’t know”. So what happened to all those who said it was going to get colder [in maybe 10,000 years], if they’re still around today? Where do they stand on warming or cooling in the next 100 years?

Show some evidence, or I’ll just consider you another King Coal Cowboy.

Val wins what? Must be the award for the wild-assed claims without any reference in the space of a paragraph. Produce ***any*** prognostication by any climate researcher that “we would be dead in an ice age now”, or, for that matter “we would be dead in a hot housed by now”.
Look up the claims made in the ’70s. For every claim that we would cool off, there was a claim that we would warm up. And there were a lot more that aid “we don’t know”. So what happened to all those who said it was going to get colder [in maybe 10,000 years], if they’re still around today? Where do they stand on warming or cooling in the next 100 years?

Show some evidence

And for those who think that academia always protects its own: check out what happens to somebody that commits fraud in publishing. They’re out on their ass. One strike and you’re out.

The issue is there is not really any evidence in support of the “it’s not warming” crowd, a small case can be made for the “humans aren’t doing it” crowd.

and so far, I’ve yet to see someone honestly show “x-volume of CO2 traps y-measurement of heat at z-pressure” or even accurately measure the carbon utilization footprint.

– To my knowledge it is not possible to do this at the scale necessary. I also don’t know if one such study actually exists, but I suspect a small-scale study to that effect wouldn’t matter. The reason is it is not a planetary atmosphere and climate. Most climate sciences are based on historic data, computer simulations and comparative planetary sciences, because those are the only reliable pieces of data we have.

That being said, if you are looking for such a study, why don’t you email a scientist like Dr. Mann, or any other of the plethora of climatologists on the planet, and ask for it? If there is one I am sure many of them would provide you with a paper or several. I have done this with professors and scientists before, and they have always provided me with the information I wanted.

If you can’t find it on your own, ask a scientist. They gladly share what they know.

Also as someone looking at going into planetary science, Venus is a fine example of what happens when you have large amounts of CO2 in a planetary atmosphere. Also simple chemistry energy equations can illustrate why, exactly, CO2 is such a potent greenhouse gas. I don’t know the specific values and equations right off the top of my head (I’m not a chemist), but if you ask any university chemistry professor, I’m sure they could demonstrate for you.

and my politics are conservative. The issue at hand in this idiocy is that it isn’t raw science, it’s the politics-money-power trifecta. It is agenda driven and, in any rational analysis, would be as accepted as any group of studies that support the position of those that paid for it. Conclusions reached, supporting data sought: that isn’t science.

– Are you sure this conclusion isn’t a correlation and causation fallacy? Also if you would describe a hypothesis as a conclusion, then yes, this is how it works. Excepts hypotheses aren’t conclusions. We test relativity and physics through testing our conclusions by trying to find data to support it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That is science, whether you want it to be or not.

Just because someone believes in human-caused global climate warming (or climate warming in general – that data is most assuredly solid) does not make them liberal. And many scientists arrive at their political conclusions specifically because of the conclusions they reach in their scientific studies. I took no position on the climate change debate until I did my own research and consulted experts in the fields that build the theory, I now know that there is a much greater proportion of the evidence in support of the theory than against it.

The reason many supporters of the climate change theory (which has as much evidence backing it as evolution, relativity and Newton’s theory of gravitation, and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theories) call its opponents “deniers” is because that is really the only conclusion we can reach. You make claims like:

Whether it’s warming or cooling, or what the trend for the long term is, isn’t — nor has it ever been — a settled science.

This, despite the huge amounts of data supporting a long-term warming trend. You use the “global cooling” argument, despite the fact it was never scientifically popular (sure, it may have been popular in the media, but the scientific community never overwhelmingly supported it beyond contemplating it). You make these claims, you don’t back them up with peer reviewed articles or actual science. When you do provide such things, they’re not science, but blogs and website with flawed arguments resultant of ignorance of the actual science involved.

And the worst of all, is you strawman scientists, and launch on ad hominem attacks toward said scientists. You call them grant-hounds, buying into a politics-money-power trifecta, with no evidence to back up such assertions. You slander and libel the name of climate scientists, because you don’t like their conclusions.

That last bit especially, is why the supporters call the opponents deniers. I have not once, ever, seen a valid, scientifically-based critique of the global climate warming theory, or the theory that humans are causing it, come from the opponents. I’ve also never seen them go much further than the surface data supporting the theory, because they don’t know the deeper meat of it. The ones that act like they’re scientifically-based critiques remind me very much of the Intelligent Design “critique” of evolution.

If your camp would like to not be labelled as denialists by the scientists and the proponents of the theory, then start bringing actual science to the table. And not science funded by special interest groups like oil companies. The CFC “eating” at the ozone was science that suffered much the same thing climate change is suffering now, and it was opposed by the same exact groups, for the same exact reasons. Scientists don’t put much stock in that.

Your camp was the one to start the “hoaxer” assaults, your camp was the one who called scientists frauds, crooks and criminals, money-whores and grant-hounds. No scientific debate has occurred between opponents and proponents, because the opponents don’t have any science backing them up that is honest.

Ask the scientists, not the blogs, for the information. Phil is a great place to start, as astronomers had a huge part in the nascent stages of the formation of the climate change theory.

“I have had no takers. Not one. Anybody care to take a shot at it now? But I warn you ahead of time that if you attack the messenger rather than the message, I shall laugh at you.”

Still trying to be a one man enquiry team eh Lonny? And you link to THE denier site above all with your pitiful attempt to try to drag AGW scientists names in the mud.
We’re still laughing at your basic lack of knowledge when it comes to CO 2.

Have a laugh then Lonny, because Eschenbach is not a reliable source for information

“Like Christopher Monckton, Willis Eschenbach is fast making a name around denialist blogs & right wing media & is often called a scientist or climate change expert like Monckton. Willis Eschenbach is a construction engineer & like Monckton an “amateur scientist”:

I have to agree with Luke. As I recall things, “warmists” did not start to commonly be called such until they had already labeled anyone who disagreed with them “denialists”. Turnabout is fair play. Live with it.

@Angus Martin:

As I mentioned before, the issues that were mainly focused on by AGW advocates after the “leak” were pretty much non-issues. But any time someone tried to bring up an actual issue, the subject was insistently (almost forcefully) brought back to the non-issues. People who had honest questions or objections were laughed down by someone bringing up yet again how ridiculous the non-issues were. And while I agree with that sentiment, I do not agree with the way it was essentially used as a straw-man argument to avoid discussion of or distract people away from more important matters. This was pervasive behavior throughout “warmist” literature and mainstream media.

The fact that the issues that were repeatedly and so insistently focused on were pretty much non-issues does not change the fact that there were (and are) real issues. There is more than just a “small case” for those who have not swallowed the AGW pill.

And even if all the data collated and diddled by the Hadley-CRU et al. team were 100% accurate (highly doubtful), there is no doubt whatever that the same data were later used improperly and irresponsibly to give false impressions, or even outright lie. Some of both was done.

If you want evidence of THAT from a respected scientist, you need not go any further than the article I linked to above. If you have any solid evidence to refute the assertions made by Wibjörn Karlén, or the supporting evidence supplied by James Watts, that the information and charts presented in the IPCC report mentioned were based on inappropriate data, I would very much like to see them.

And to everybody:

I want to amend what I stated before about having “no takers”. Early on, a couple of people did respond to my challenge, and attempted character assassination of both Karlén and Watts, but never even tried to refute the actual ISSUES that they raised. I repeat: my challenge is to refute, with evidence, the assertion that the IPCC report mentioned in that article, and associated illustrations, were made using inappropriate data. The challenge is open to anybody, except those who have nothing but personal attacks to offer. If all you have are ad hominem arguments, you may as well keep them to yourself, otherwise you will be laughed at and vilified publicly.

#47 Brandon said – “The data that were “faked” were mathematical proxies used in computer modeling; the data extrapolated from the models weren’t consistant with observable fact, so some of the factoring had to be changed to make the models consistant with observed data. That’s not faking.”

No it is not faking. In British Radio Astronomy it is called fudging.

The way modelling works is that you use a theory to create a model and test it against the observed data. If it fits the observed data you can use it to extrapolate beyond the observed data. If it doesn’t fit you go back to rethink the theory not the model.

What you must not do is start with the observed data and create a model to fit that data. By introducing enough free factors into the model you can prove anything

The problem is, that DOESN’T say it all. It may be a truthful statement, but part of the context was deliberately left out.

BOTH universities involved (Pennsylvania State and East Anglia) have made public statements to the effect that the practices that were used need work. In fact, in one of the links Phil supplies above, the The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee probably stated it best, because unlike the universities, they are the only ones, as far as I know, to put the two halves together rather than putting them in completely separate public statements:

“On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community BUT THAT THOSE PRACTICES NEED TO CHANGE.” [emphasis mine]

And the investigators (at an earlier time) made similar statements about the other “accepted scientific practices”: that they may be accepted, but that they are sorely in need of improvement.

The committee further stated: “”The leaked emails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure, particularly to climate change sceptics.”

And East Anglia stated at the time: “UEA both accepts and supports the Committee’s findings about the increased need for greater transparency whenever possible in science and particularly climate science.” Which contradicts their own later statements (Phil’s other link) about not wanting to disclose research data, and makes me wonder, “Which side of their mouths are they talking out of today?”

And regardless of Phil’s defense of East Anglia’s position of not wanting to disclose data (hint here, Phil: your biases are showing about as badly as an ill-fitting brassiere), there are three very big problems with that position in this particular case.

The first problem is that keeping research data private might make sense in the context of experimental research, because experiments can generally be replicated by others. But this wasn’t experimental research. These were “studies” based solely on external data. As such, there is absolutely no way to verify the validity of any of their claims unless that data, and all the manipulations applied to it, are provided along with the conclusions. (The UK government implicitly concurs with this concept, which is why they are doing their own independent analysis of the data, which they expect to take about 3 years.)

The second problem with the idea of keeping the data private is that these institutions are publicly funded (tax money). As such, everything they did, including their data AND their results, ethically belongs to the public, and should have been made publicly available without question.

The third issue is related to the first, but not identical: as the House of Commons and other investigators have all noted, these “studies” were undertaken and supported by a very small, insular group of people. If they had not been so defensive about supplying any of their data or methods (they defied a number of FOIA requests, after having flatly refused to supply information for years to people who actually had legitimate reason for wanting to see it), they might have actually benefited from a few outside viewpoints, and at the same time helped relieve suspicion of wrongdoing. But the fact is that for years they did exactly the opposite of what they should have, very likely breaking laws in the process.

I could go on but that should be sufficient. This proclamation from the university has very little significance at all. Except for Mann’s personal status, the important stuff had already been decided, and wasn’t even mentioned.

So it really, literally, doesn’t say it all. They left half out, and it is probably the most important half. They did say it at other times, but I am sure they left it out this time on purpose.

The complete statement is: “The researchers did not seriously violate accepted practices. BUT THOSE PRACTICES HAVE TO CHANGE.”

“Also, an engineer is not a climatologist. Plus, you should cite sources before saying things like ‘only after repeated attempts to get access to the data which was denied’. Further, simple claims is not enough, you need to prove that the guy was denied the data, not just the man’s word.”

You should do at least a little research of the subject yourself if you are going to discuss it. The fact that you don’t even know about this suggests that you haven’t.

This issue has been hashed over and over and over again. First, in this particular case the fact that he was an engineer is not very relevant. He was qualified to judge the issues he was trying to examine. And yes, the “leaked” emails reveal that he — specifically him — was denied the information for years.

Contrary to what many of the AGW supporters have claimed, he only resorted to FOIA requests when he had thoroughly exhausted all other avenues, which is documented. The folks at CRU would have us believe that they were inundated with senseless FOIA requests. But they conveniently leave out the part about only receiving those requests after more conventional and friendly methods were met with a brick wall.

At one point there was, in fact, a campaign to get people to send in FOIA requests on a list of specific topics (and it should be made clear that only one request was to have been sent on each point). But again, they fail to mention that it was only after information on each of those points was refused to other inquiries that the FOIA requests were sent.

This one really has been hashed over a lot and he facts are fairly well known. And you should really not need to have someone prove them: you would know them yourself already if you had made any real effort at doing your homework.

You know Phil should just stick to astronomy and stop these biased post towards science and skepticism. I am sick and tired of hearing about how pseudoscience is killing babies in Australia. Enough about Doctor stinking Who, who cares about that outdated silly show. Wil Wheaton is an over rated actor. What we need is more about scientist are trying to turn the US into a socialist country with their silly rules and regulations. We need more science based on the mommy instinct and teaching that the Earth is only 6000 years old.”

Hah ha ha ha, Davidlpf! That was great! Who said sarcasm was the lowest form of wit? I am afraid the deniers lack the brains to see through it. They probably thought it was one of them commenting. Hah ha ha!

Climate change deniers just don’t have what it takes to understand the science. They lack scientific credentials to pass judgement. PNAS found 98% of scientists are saying climate change is happening. The fact is the deniers are blind to what we are doing to the planet. We know for a fact that without funding from big oil and big coal they wouldn’t have a case. They want us to suck in CO2 like big tobacco wanted us to smoke poison. Corporate media make the denialists’ case bigger than it really is.

Seriously speaking, we are killing the planet. Increased CO2 will cause widespread devastation. Glaciers are retreating. Arctic is disappearing. Antartica is melting. Sea levels are projected to rise up to six meters if we don’t do something soon. Then there are droughts, floods, forest fires, massive disruption to agriculture, eco-systems, mass extinctions including polar bears, and in worst case scenarios perhaps billions of death are among the risks documented by the best scientific opinion as represented in IPCC reports. And then there are the deniers who would like us to believe that the Earth is still flat! They are nuts!

Phil Plait got it right with that funny photo. Those of us on the side of the truth should just shut our ears and go “lalalalalala! I can’t hear you!” Maybe then the deniers will get the message. Haha ha ha ha!

Then Cuccinelli filed a response to the response, which is worthy of much greater attention then it got. For example, in the UVa submission:

Furthermore, the expansive scope of the information requested [by Cuccinelli] appears untethered to any potential [Fraud Against the Taxpayer Act] violation. Rather, the requests seek a voluminous body of academics and scientific information, documents and correspondence related to the merits of scientific research spanning a period of more than ten years. The nexus between these broad requests and the five identified grants (or any potential FATA violation) is unexplained.

Cuccinelli’s response:

In response to [the above paragraph], the allegations of said paragraph are denied.

In other words, when Cuccinelli is asked to show how his demands for all information ever touched by Michael Mann actually relate to a fraud investigation, all he can say is the legal equivalent of “lalalalala! I can’t hear you!”.

A judge has agreed to stay Cuccinelli’s demand until it can be argued before the court:

“Seriously speaking, we are killing the planet. Increased CO2 will cause widespread devastation. Glaciers are retreating. Arctic is disappearing. Antartica is melting. Sea levels are projected to rise up to six meters if we don’t do something soon. Then there are droughts, floods, forest fires, massive disruption to agriculture, eco-systems, mass extinctions including polar bears, and in worst case scenarios perhaps billions of death are among the risks documented by the best scientific opinion as represented in IPCC reports.”

OMG sHx that sounds like it has the makings of an academy award winning Sci-Fi cult classic. You could even use one of Mike Mann’s or Phil Jones’ debunked hockey stick graphs to pull in the CAGW faithful(they would eat it up!).

Well, I’ve been a ‘denier’ for a long time now. That word, of course, derives from ‘holocaust denier’ in order to demonize and demean those of us who believe that emperical evidence measured accurately over time and geological history trumps faulty computer models.

Actual measurements show the Earth is, in fact, cooling, not warming. Sorry that the facts conflict with the computer models based on biased and sloppy data sets.

Regardless, the Cap and Tax bills are dead, and don’t represent the destructive attack on the American economy that they would have produced.

China continues to build more than one coal plant a month while our power grids decay and we run out of electrical energy. Meanwhile science is politicized to the point where it loses any meaning and people’s faith in it’s ability to provide for a freer and better life is undermined.

So all of you hard-core alarmist go ahead an fight the losing fight that state the seas will rise and all of us will perish. We have a much better chance of perishing in the upcoming Younger Dryas type event, or another ice age. Thankfully, your high-pitched, condesending, and hysterical voices are no longer registering on the public.

But the damage has been done, and the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the ignorant public will cause a distrust of scientists for decades to come.

What I mean is that you do have people on one side saying “we’re destroying the planet and we’re all doomed and we’re gonna die!”

On the other you have the people saying “LALALALA what? LALALALA huh? Everything is A-OK!” says Buddy Christ with a wink and a thumbs up.

Both are wrong and dangerous if you ask me.

I like to try and be in the middle. That’s the stance of: OK, we’re obviously making a mark on the planet. We’re not doomed because we’re smart enough to fix the problem. Let’s step back and look at the whole thing, then lets break it down into smaller things.

Extremism in almost any form can’t be a good thing. I understand that sometimes the inevitable amount of stupid starts to creep in. We have to fight the urge to want to set it on fire. I love fire, by the way. Besides, stupid already burrrnnnssss as it is.

Science isn’t about thinking or believing something is the way it is. It isn’t a religion. It’s about ultimately knowing the way it is.

I’m seeing a lot of arguments from the deniers that have been debunked OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Yet they reappear constantly. That makes the whole “please do you research” thing even more funnier. Or scarier. No, the total mass of the Antarctic ice sheet is not getting increasing, the sun is not responsible (not this time), Earth isn’t cooling. All these are either made up or misconceptions. So guys, please do your research…

@73 michael
“Actual measurements show the Earth is, in fact, cooling, not warming. Sorry that the facts conflict with the computer models based on biased and sloppy data sets.”

No, you are absolutely 100% wrong. It’s you who are not based on facts. Facts show its warming. Satellite measurements show its warming. It’s only when you improperly look at the last 10 years and then incorrectly say that we have not exceeded the high temperature since 1998 or 2005 depending on your data set are you saying it’s cooling.

When you use the actual definition of climate, its warming. Even looking at the recent yeas, when you are consistently having record temps in the top five, its a good indication things are warming too. Furthermore, guess what? NASA found that the past 12 months in a rolling average have been the warmest on record, not to mention the past January to May has been the warmest average.

What happened to reasoned scientific debate? Have we abandoned reason for madness and let irrational passions rule the day? Why is this a matter of being right and wrong when science, good science is about asking the difficult questions and being honest enough to debate them in the open and determine conclusions based on observable fact… and then going back and testing those all hypotheses over and over again.

So, again, I must ask, why have we allowed the politics of passionate personal belief to eclipse methodology and process? Why?

(it’s entirely likely that I will be labelled a ‘denier’ merely because I am asking for science and scientific process, which includes proposing hypotheses and allowing one’s conclusions to be tested openly by others. I am merely asking where the review process went and why science has taken a backseat to politics. Please consider the importance of science being able to operate freely without bending to populist thought before you set about labelling anyone.)

Here’s an idea: if you make a claim (e.g., michael’s “Actual measurements show the Earth is, in fact, cooling, not warming.”), provide a citation to the science that supports your claim. Argument by assertion won’t convince anyone.

From what I understand, the “trick” and “hide the decline” were pretty blatantly dishonest. One of Mann’s proxy data sets showed warming, then abruptly declined after 1960. To “hide the decline” they tacked observational data onto the proxy data to make it look like it kept going upwards. That’s not shorthand or professional jargon, that’s manipulating data.

This one, like the other so-called investigations, didn’t ask the right questions so of course it found convenient answers. It’s sort of like anti-vaxers and psychics declaring themselves purveyors of truth. Interestingly, no “investigation” to date has questioned Steve McIntyre, the most well-known critic of Michael Mann and subject of some of the emails and who by the way agrees that CO2 contributes to warming. Why not? The obvious answer is he would provide information that the investigators don’t want to deal with.

Phil, frankly, you’re the one in denial here. You are conflating science with politics. Mann did poor research (but not to level of fraud in McIntyre’s opinion) and behaved badly with regards to critics. Phil Jones now acknowledges Mann’s results in terms of estimating global temperatures during the last 1000 years are uncertain. Clutching at the results of psuedo-investigations is just so much “la-la-la-la I can’t hear you.”

From what I understand of the situation, yes, you are wrong. The “hide the decline” bit was, from what I’ve read, referring to using actual, true measurements instead of unreliable proxy tree ring data. In other words, because tree ring proxies did not match readings from actual thermometers, they used the more reliable thermometer data. (Writing this from recall, so I might be wrong.)

It does not matter what public opinion is, what some poll says, what the majority of scientists say, etc., etc., etc. Climategate exposed the supposed science for what it was and is and has shown people that there could be (at most likely be) another explanation for global warming.

It is kinda an odd coincidence when the number of sunspots increase over the last hundred or so years of solar cycles and multiple planets in our solar system exhibit increased global temperatures. Hmmmmm.

Help! help! We’re caught in a temporal loop. We keep seeing the same denialist assertions-without-citations over and over.
If we are to break free, in the next cycle we must find a way to avoid making the same mistake once.

IT is funny that the non-denialists use every excuse under the sun to push their agenda. More hurricanes- global warming. less hurricanes- global warming. Trees dying- global warming, trees growing- global warming. It is cold out- global warming. It is hot out- global warming. Changes in migration patterns- global warming. a lake evaporating- global warming. a new lake forming- global warming. glaciers melting- global warming. Glaciers growing- global warming. things are changing- global warming. Things are not changing- global warming. and on and on and on and on

Sorry, but no. The only thing that Climategate revealed was that the denialists are keen to make noise over nothing to back up their assertions. And honestly, we knew they liked doing that BEFORE Climategate.

And perhaps you’d like to back up the silly little “many of the planets are warming” argument with some evidence (oh, and what about the ones that AREN’T warming? Why are you ignoring those? 😉 )? Lets ignore the fact that there has been no significant increase in solar irradiance in the recent years … How is this related to the global warming occuring on the Earth? Why are you folks so keen to keep spewing the same old debunked arguments time and time again?

@ Angus Martin : “And the worst of all, is you strawman scientists, and launch on ad hominem attacks toward said scientists. You call them grant-hounds, buying into a politics-money-power trifecta, with no evidence to back up such assertions. You slander and libel the name of climate scientists, because you don’t like their conclusions.” This raises the question, why would Val have called them grant-hounds? Purely to discredit them through an ad hominem attack? No. You see, I have always taken a stance very similar to Val’s, and after I debate with someone and present very, very convincing research and evidence in the favor of my argument, my “opponent” invariably has one reaction. Hhe (or she) stumbles for a minute, and then says something akin to: “Well, what do you know? I am not going to believe you over experts in the field, why would they skew data? They don’t have any ulterior motives, they are the models of scientific, honest intellectuals. You don’t know what you’re talking about because you’re not one of them.” This is not the how, but the why. Scientist, as intelligent as they might be, are still human, and thus prone to specific corruptions. Val wasn’t trying to discredit them through calling them grant-hounds, he was merely stating WHY they would skew evidence in favor of their conclusion.

I suppose I could take the time to completely reiterate a case that I have successfully made again and again… not as to why climate change is not occurring, but and informative case explaining exactly what IS happening… however, I have done it so many times… it has gotten boring to argue something that I personally doesn’t matter very much… in fact, the only way I think it matters is that people shouldn’t be wasting their effort trying to convince others to stop climate change. They should be using those same efforts to do something useful, like promoting recycling and arguing against pollution. Adding an extremely minuscule amount of CO2 to the ozone layer isn’t what will hurt us in the long run, pollution is. By they way, it is minuscule. In the last 160 years, humans have caused what would make up less than 2.5% of the ozone later. That is, if all the CO2 that farms, factories, cars, etc. made over the last 160 years was added together and then not broken down by plants or other natural processes, so that specifically the human CO2 stuck around for that entire length of time, it would make up only 2.5% of the ozone layer. On the other hand, if you looked into the amount of death and disease that pollution has caused, you would find a problem that really does need solving. Instead of using your efforts in a field that is not only controversial, but also irrelevant, focus them somewhere productive.

Thanks for the reply. My understanding is similar to yours, but from what I remember they attached the thermometer measurements to the end of the proxy measurements, making it look like that particular proxy set trended up at the end when in fact it trended down.

Contrary to what many of the AGW supporters have claimed, he only resorted to FOIA requests when he had thoroughly exhausted all other avenues, which is documented. The folks at CRU would have us believe that they were inundated with senseless FOIA requests. But they conveniently leave out the part about only receiving those requests after more conventional and friendly methods were met with a brick wall.

AGW proponents don’t leave that part out, what the denialists leave out is that the data climatologists are legally allowed to release is publicly available and has been for a long time. What the denialists kept on requesting was data that was either already available, or from the small fraction of data that is owned by other groups like the national weather agencies of various countries. In the latter case it would be illegal for the scientists to release such data since it is copyrighted by the agencies that collected it. If the denialists really wanted it they could have gotten it from the source, but instead they continued to insist that climatologists break the law and release the data.

Thanks for the reply. My understanding is similar to yours, but from what I remember they attached the thermometer measurements to the end of the proxy measurements, making it look like that particular proxy set trended up at the end when in fact it trended down.

You make it sound like it was some sort of deceptive secret. The flaws in that particular proxy were well-publicized in the scientific literature and I am not aware of anyone giving any evidence that anyone has used the correction without acknowledging it in their methods. There is nothing wrong with correcting known flaws in a data set as long as you point out in your paper that you did so.

What I find most ironic is that the only ones who have actually been shown to have acted in violation of established rules of ethics in their field are the denialist engineers like Luke’s anonymous source. What they are doing is in direct violation of the National Society of Professional Engineer’s code of ethics, specifically:

2. Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence.

2.1. Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.
2.2. Engineers shall not affix their signatures to any plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence, nor to any plan or document not prepared under their direction and control.
2.3. Engineers may accept assignments and assume responsibility for coordination of an entire project and sign and seal the engineering documents for the entire project, provided that each technical segment is signed and sealed only by the qualified engineers who prepared the segment.

3. Engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
3.2. Engineers may express publicly technical opinions that are founded upon knowledge of the facts and competence in the subject matter.

5. Engineers shall avoid deceptive acts.
5.1. Engineers shall not falsify their qualifications or permit misrepresentation of their or their associates’ qualifications. They shall not misrepresent or exaggerate their responsibility in or for the subject matter of prior assignments. Brochures or other presentations incident to the solicitation of employment shall not misrepresent pertinent facts concerning employers, employees, associates, joint venturers, or past accomplishments.

@Rory Kent #20: with all due respect, maybe the problem is popular conceptions of what is “scientific sounding”. If you want to prove the paranormal scientifically, you don’t go for anecdotes, you begin by browsing academic libraries for books on microwave technology or whatnot. Even the philosophical branches of philosophy of mind, phenomenology etc. won’t do as these are not hard science. How can you compare a hard science like climatology to the paranormal?

If you hope “that our current age of prosperity and development would continue without hinderance [sic] or difficulty”, you don’t need to turn to AGW and “scientific sounding claims” to be disappointed. A growing world population relying on a swiftly-dwindling reserve of finite resources is proof enough that your hopes are in vain.

Val wasn’t trying to discredit them through calling them grant-hounds, he was merely stating WHY they would skew evidence in favor of their conclusion.

Based on an assumption. There is no evidence suggesting that scientists are grant-hounds. It is an attempt to discredit scientists, and remains so without evidence. No amount of “well I have disproven many people in arguments on this issue” stories is going to change that.

not as to why climate change is not occurring, but and informative case explaining exactly what IS happening…

The IPCC reports are an excellent place to start, but I know full well that climate deniers like to call that politics and not science. It is happening. And yes, our estimates and understanding of what is going on is changing, that’s what science does. A change in the evidence must also bring about a change in the conclusions.

They should be using those same efforts to do something useful, like promoting recycling and arguing against pollution.

– Which they are doing, these two things are intrinsically tied to how to stop global warming. But don’t let facts get in the way of rhetoric, of course.

Adding an extremely minuscule amount of CO2 to the ozone layer isn’t what will hurt us in the long run, pollution is.

– The ozone layer is not the only place the CO2 is going. The ozone layer is something else entirely.

By they way, it is minuscule. In the last 160 years, humans have caused what would make up less than 2.5% of the ozone later. That is, if all the CO2 that farms, factories, cars, etc. made over the last 160 years was added together and then not broken down by plants or other natural processes, so that specifically the human CO2 stuck around for that entire length of time, it would make up only 2.5% of the ozone layer.

– I see a lot of assertions, and no citations.

On the other hand, if you looked into the amount of death and disease that pollution has caused, you would find a problem that really does need solving. Instead of using your efforts in a field that is not only controversial, but also irrelevant, focus them somewhere productive.

– Where do you come off saying that climate change study is irrelevant? Or that global warming theory proponents don’t think we need to cut down on pollution? This problem is not just one thing, no climate scientist would ever tell you it was. No science is irrelevant, we study it so we can better understand our planet and our universe. That helps us, often in ways we can’t predict. Maxwell did not dream that his theories would lead to the internet, but he did it anyway. You say we shouldn’t use efforts focusing in a field that is controversial, then should we continue researching evolutionary biology with the great numbers of applicable innovations in medicine we’ve found through it, because some people (creationists) see it as controversial?

Climate change scientists agree that we need to reduce pollution (in fact, that is one of the primary ways they suggest we prevent climate change!), they also argue we need to reduce ocean pollution and recycle more.

Contrary to what many of the AGW supporters have claimed, he only resorted to FOIA requests when he had thoroughly exhausted all other avenues, which is documented. The folks at CRU would have us believe that they were inundated with senseless FOIA requests. But they conveniently leave out the part about only receiving those requests after more conventional and friendly methods were met with a brick wall.

AGW don’t leave that part out, what the denialists leave out is that the data climatologists are legally allowed to release is publicly available and has for a long time. What the denialists kept on requesting was data that was either already available, or from the small fraction of data that is owned by other groups like the national weather agencies of various countries. In the latter case it would be illegal for the scientists to release such data since it is copyrighted by the agencies that collected it. If the denialists really wanted it they could have gotten it from the source, but instead they continued to insist that climatologists break the law and release the data.

Thursday, 29 May 2008 07:12:02 : Filename: 1212063122.txt Dr. Jones asks Dr.
Mann to delete emails regarding the development of the IPCC Fourth Assessment
Report and contact a colleague to do the same.

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new
email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise…
Cheers
Phil

Personally, I wouldn’t send him anything. I have no idea what he’s up to, but you
can be sure it falls into the “no good” category.…I would not give them *anything*. I
would not respond or even acknowledge receipt of their emails. There is no reason
to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!

This may have been noted before, but I ran through the comments, and visit the B A blog daily, and don’t recall seeing it. In addition to the above, The Sunday Times of London has since retracted its own big bad Climategate claim:

Adding an extremely minuscule amount of CO2 to the ozone layer isn’t what will hurt us in the long run, pollution is

WHAT?! Global warming and the ozone layer have essentially nothing whatsoever to do with each other! I am sorry, but nobody who has even the slightest clue about global warming could ever make such a elementary mistake.

As I mentioned before, the issues that were mainly focused on by AGW advocates after the “leak” were pretty much non-issues. But any time someone tried to bring up an actual issue, the subject was insistently (almost forcefully) brought back to the non-issues. People who had honest questions or objections were laughed down by someone bringing up yet again how ridiculous the non-issues were. And while I agree with that sentiment, I do not agree with the way it was essentially used as a straw-man argument to avoid discussion of or distract people away from more important matters. This was pervasive behavior throughout “warmist” literature and mainstream media.

– Now, is it so much that they were really talking about “non-issues”, or do you simply claim they are non-issues? I want examples of what you’re saying. I’m tired of climate deniers saying things and never backing it up with hard evidence (blogs are not hard evidence).

The fact that the issues that were repeatedly and so insistently focused on were pretty much non-issues does not change the fact that there were (and are) real issues. There is more than just a “small case” for those who have not swallowed the AGW pill.

– If there is more than a small case, let’s see it. All arguments I’ve seen from the deniers are ones based in incomplete understanding of the science, or purposeful misrepresentation of the facts. There is no major fraction of the scientific community which supports the opposition. I want to see real support, real evidence, and a real, coherent case. I’ve yet to see anything of the sort. The scientific community has yet to see anything of the sort.

And even if all the data collated and diddled by the Hadley-CRU et al. team were 100% accurate (highly doubtful), there is no doubt whatever that the same data were later used improperly and irresponsibly to give false impressions, or even outright lie. Some of both was done.

– Evidence, evidence, evidence! You must provide evidence! And none of this “well if you had done your homework, you would know!” garbage. I’ve seen plenty of claims and misrepresentations of events from the denial community, none of it is up to snuff with the official documentation. Evidence!

As for this:

If you want evidence of THAT from a respected scientist, you need not go any further than the article I linked to above. If you have any solid evidence to refute the assertions made by Wibjörn Karlén, or the supporting evidence supplied by James Watts, that the information and charts presented in the IPCC report mentioned were based on inappropriate data, I would very much like to see them.

This statement perfectly describes it:

You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.

– Not looking at the evidence, and are looking at one spot narrowly. All I see is nitpicking and willfully ignoring the full body of evidence.

And no bloggers’ claims of this:

[My comment] Professor Karlen was quite correct. The claims made by the CRU, and repeated in the IPCC document, were false. Karlen was looking at the evidence.

– Changes that.

I repeat: my challenge is to refute, with evidence, the assertion that the IPCC report mentioned in that article, and associated illustrations, were made using inappropriate data.

– The problem is you people keep claiming that any data supporting IPCC is erroneous. You can challenge all you want, but as long as you blind out the full body of evidence, you will never be fair in your evaluation of said evidence.

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how debunked Climategate is or will ever get. The vast majority of people aren’t paying attention anymore, and got all their information about this “scandal” in the first day. They will continue to believe Climategate exposes climate science as some crazy conspiracy until something completely new comes along.

Distribution for Endorsements —
I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as
possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is
numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500
signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000
without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a
different story.

Conclusion — Forget the screening, forget asking
them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those
names!

Timing — I feel strongly that the week of 24 November is too late.
1. We wanted to announce the Statement in the period when there was
a sag in related news, but in the week before Kyoto we should expect
that we will have to crowd out many other articles about climate.
2. If the Statement comes out just a few days before Kyoto I am
afraid that the delegates who we want to influence will not have any
time to pay attention to it. We should give them a few weeks to hear
about it.
3. If Greenpeace is having an event the week before, we should have
it a week before them so that they and other NGOs can further spread
the word about the Statement. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be so
bad to release the Statement in the same week, but on a
diffeent day. The media might enjoy hearing the message from two
very different directions.

Conclusion — I suggest the week of 10 November, or the week of 17
November at the latest.

Mike — I have no organized email list that could begin to compete
with the list you can get from the Dutch. But I am still
willing to send you what I have, if you wish.

“- The problem is you people keep claiming that any data supporting IPCC is erroneous. You can challenge all you want, but as long as you blind out the full body of evidence, you will never be fair in your evaluation of said evidence.”
__________________________

Remember all the fun we had last year over 1995 global temperatures,
with early release of information (via Oz), “inventing” the December
monthly value, letters to Nature etc etc?

I think we should have a cunning plan about what to do this year,
simply to avoid a lot of wasted time.

I have been discussing with David P and suggest the following:

1. By 20 Dec we will have land and sea data up to Nov

2. David (?) computes the December land anomaly based on 500hPa
heights up to 20 Dec.

3. We assume that Dec SST anomaly is the same as Nov

4. We can therefore give a good estimate of 1996 global temps by 20
Dec

5. We feed this selectively to Nick Nuttall (who has had this in the
past and seems now to expect special treatment) so that he can write
an article for the silly season. We could also give this to Neville
Nicholls??

6. We explain that data is provisional and how the data has been
created so early (ie the estimate for Dec) and also

7. We explain why the globe is 0.23k (or whatever the final figure is)
cooler than 95 (NAO reversal, slight La Nina). Also that global annual
avg is only accuirate to a few hundredths of a degree (we said this
last year – can we be more exact, eg PS/MS 0.05K or is this to big??)

8. FROM NOW ON WE ANSWER NO MORE ENQUIRIES ABOUT 1996 GLOBAL TEMPS BUT
EXPLAIN THAT IT WILL BE RELEASED IN JANUARY.

9. We relesae the final estimate on 20 Jan, with a joint UEA/MetO
press release. It may not evoke any interest by then.

10. For questions after the release to Nuttall, (I late Dec, early
Jan) we give the same answer as we gave him.

Are you happy with this, or can you suggest something better (ie
simpler)? I know it sound a bit cloak-and-dagger but its just meant to
save time in the long run.

… the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.

— and the UK whitewashes basically said the same thing, “this is typical of ‘Climate Science'”.

Sadly, that is probably true. However, it is true also that news agencies, especially television, are being very mum about the debunkings. How will anyone possibly ever get the correct information if no one is talking about it?

Big media has to talk about this, or it will never become widely known, no matter how much scientists and science websites cry out about it.

Further, there is no evidence that any of this was put into place, even if they are serious about it. Do you have proof that this happened, or that they merely talked about it?

No one is saying that these people didn’t act out of line, the difference is what they say in the emails, and what they actually did, are two completely different things. For example, I can, in an email, claim all I want that I will grab my computer and toss it out the window because it is “disobeying”…whether or not I actually do it is something entirely different.

It would be interesting to know why Phil Plait seems to think that the Climategate e-mails were a non-event. Does he really believe that truncating proxy data when it fails to match the measured temperature is a valid scientific step? Or conspiring to block scientific opponents from publishing replies in scientific journals a part of the scientific method?

I must have missed the part about “climate denialists” since as far as I can tell, none of the key principals who were smeared in these e-mails were interviewed by the Penn State “investigation”.

The Climategate e-mails clearly were a very real event. Quite why Phil Plait thinks otherwise is one of those “mysteries of science” that will never be explained.

Oh, and any quotation from those e-mails were “out of context”. Exactly the same argument used by Christian fundamentalists when a Bible citation contradicts them.

Gee, ironically-named Arthur Reader (133), if only I had actually given a link to why I say Climategate was a non-event in my post, and made it easy to see, like maybe making the words “I have been calling it a non-event” an actual link to why I think it was a non-event.

As a fellow space lover, I’m surprised you have not drawn any correlation between data about solar activity and temperature trends on Earth. They match up quite well. How does man-made global warming sync up with the cooling over the past couple years? The sun became pretty inactive during that time. Accidental oversight or something more…?

Oh, and any quotation from those e-mails were “out of context”. Exactly the same argument used by Christian fundamentalists when a Bible citation contradicts them.

– Normally because Christian fundamentalists are right when they claim that, the Bible is frequently cited out of context. The difference with the Bible and emails is interpretation – the Bible is stories, the emails are not. The Bible is also translated into multiple versions over the course of thousands of years, the emails are not.

Finally, different denominations teach the Bible differently, and teach different interpretations. Some focus on basing opinions on individual passages, while others focus on taking books, and still others the entire Bible itself.

If you fail to look both before and after the email you’re quoting, and the discussion it’s involved in, it is indeed fallacious to take out-of-context statements and apply it to the greater body. Politicians and the media do this all the time.

For example, Sarah Palin claiming Obama said this:

“whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”

When he actually said this:

“It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them.”

So. Is out-of-context now officially something that’s okay to do, and always amounts to the truth? Or are you simply being dishonest?

Further, there is no evidence that any of this was put into place, even if they are serious about it. Do you have proof that this happened, or that they merely talked about it?

No one is saying that these people didn’t act out of line, the difference is what they say in the emails, and what they actually did, are two completely different things. For example, I can, in an email, claim all I want that I will grab my computer and toss it out the window because it is “disobeying”…whether or not I actually do it is something entirely different.”
_______________________________

I know, I know Angus – lalalalala, you can’t hear me.

You no longer have to take the words of the priests and the bishops of your church of CAGW as gospel. You can read for yourself, the emails from EAU/CRU in their entirety as they were prepared for FOIA release, should they have been pushed far enough. – http://eastangliaemails.com

To date, the 62mb leaked FOIA file of last November contains not a single email or file that has been contested by a single individual or institution. In fact the contrary is true. The file appears to have been prepared internally at the University of East Anglia(East Anglia where Morse is currently conducting his investigation on my television here in Sweden ).

There has not been a single honest investigation into climategate. All have been whitewashes.

The BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico is valued in untold billions. The costs associated with the religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming are in the multiple of recurring trillions of dollars and potentially billions of lives.

Can you imagine the media/public reaction if like the EAU/CRU FOIA document leak occurred relating to malfeasance regarding BP drilling activities and not only were the investigation limited to the documents publicly available but the key allegations were ignored totally?

With trillions of dollars and the allegations that billions of lives are at stake why has not every email from CRU/NASA GISS/NOAA/The Met Office/BoM etc, that relate to the known improprieties been subpoenaed and analyzed?

It is quite simple, it is CAGW, ‘Climate Science’.

Depending on the prevailing natural climate variations you and other faithful may sing in the chorus for 20 or more years. With more than 1.5 billion people living today without electricity or running water nobody in the developing world is listening to tails of unicorns and pixie dust. But the wealthy in developing nations are very eager to work with the king makers and money dispersal agents of the Global Warming Industry.

You should relax as Phil pointed out “Expect the comments below to be filled with changing goalposts …” and expect your church of CAGW to continue to change the date the comet will pick you up or when the great wave will sweep all of mankind away ‘cept the few faithful that build an ark and sail to what ever planet your nirvana is located.

AGW tipping point: end of world moved to 2200
The Independent has published some optimistic news yesterday:

Scientists ‘expect climate tipping point’ by 2200

They asked 14 climate scientists what is the length of the Chinese emperor’s nose and when will the tipping point destroy the Earth. None of them had any clue but the person who asked those questions apparently thought that he gets a very accurate, scientific answer if he computes the average of the 14 answers.

The authors of a PNAS preprint decided that the climatic end of the world wouldn’t be in 1999, as the United Nations announced in 1989, but in 2200, and they organized an interview with 14 “luminaries”.”http://tinyurl.com/3yatjgu

The Mayans used their knowledge of astronomy to help rule their citizens. Perhaps we are seeing a repeat. If man-made global warming is real, then humanity will die and the Earth will be better off for it. The Earth survived being hit by another planet (which created our moon) so I think it will be fine. It also suffered through 6 mass extinctions related to climate changes before we ever started walking upright. Our society doesn’t care about space travel, so we will be dead relatively soon anyway.

Nothing in those emails changes the data collected. None of your ad hominems and strawmen will change that.

There have been investigations into this affair by the British Parliament and multiple universities, as well as the U.S. Congress. All have cleared the actors involved of wrong-doing. Who do you propose is capable of an honest investigation of the affair? At this stage it seems the only “honest investigation” you will accept is the one which calls for the heads of these folks. If Parliament or Congress accused someone of a crime, you would be waxing poetic about how climate science has finally been proven a hoax. They didn’t, so you’re claiming they are biased.

The BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico is valued in untold billions. The costs associated with the religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming are in the multiple of recurring trillions of dollars and potentially billions of lives.

– I’d like some source citations for this one.

Can you imagine the media/public reaction if like the EAU/CRU FOIA document leak occurred relating to malfeasance regarding BP drilling activities and not only were the investigation limited to the documents publicly available but the key allegations were ignored totally?

– Just because the conclusion is one you disagree with does not mean those investigators ignored “key allegations”. If Congress investigates BP and clears them of wrong-doing, then I will accept it, no matter how much I’d love to see BP grilled for the oil spill. If the evidence shows that they did not commit any form of wrong-doing, or stayed within industry standards, then I will accept that decision.

The witch-hunters will not. You fall in the latter category.

The link is dead.

As for this:

You no longer have to take the words of the priests and the bishops of your church of CAGW as gospel. You can read for yourself, the emails from EAU/CRU in their entirety as they were prepared for FOIA release, should they have been pushed far enough. – http://eastangliaemails.com

– It’s amusing that you’re using the same terminology toward scientists and proponents of scientific theories that the anti-evolution crowd is using. No one takes you seriously when you pull out those cards. Just look at the IDers. They also claim that the courts in cases like Kitzmiller v. Dover are biased towards evolution, and a government agenda to turn Americans into secular zombies.

I think it’s morbidly amusing that the same arguments being used against global warming was used against CFC ozone depletion back in the 70s and 80s when the push to ban them was on. Lots of people claimed banning them would destroy entire economies, destroy third world countries, and not mitigate any environmental catastrophe. They claimed the ozone layer was simply going through natural cycles, and had CFC producing companies bankrolling scientists to “prove” that CFCs didn’t deplete the ozone layer.

The same groups that oppose global warming now opposed CFC ozone depleting then. They’re using the same arguments. They’re road-blocking legislation and international treaties to deal with the problem in the same ways they did back then.

People called it a hoax, people claimed the science wasn’t in, that it wasn’t conclusive enough to take such drastic action. People called it a power-grab.

Today, in the early 21st century, we are beginning to see the ozone repair itself, the hole is reducing, just as the scientists then predicted it would, the same scientists who were called alarmists and doomsdayers by the deniers back then.

1) Assume that the Earth is not warming, but we take action to reduce pollution. What are the negatives? What are the positives?
2) Assume that the Earth is warming, and we take action to reduce pollution. What are the negatives? What are the positives?
3) Assume that the Earth is warming, and we take no action to reduce pollution. What are the negatives? What are the positives?

On the subject of Climategate, you have not established that any of the individuals involved followed through on any of the things that were said in the e-mails. You also do not present the full context of the e-mails (what other correspondence took place? were there any phone calls?). Even assuming that the researchers in the Climategate manufactroversy acted irresponsibly, you also have not established that the totality of evidence supporting AGW is wrong.

Finally, for those individuals who support the scientific consensus that AGW is occurring, what motive would they have for it? For myself, I would really like for AGW to be wrong, but the evidence pretty overwhelmingly points to it being true. If you have abundant scientific evidence that AGW is not occurring, please present it.

It is in fact quite astonishing to see that a “non-event” would have elicited the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee to recommend a change in current “common practice” in the “climate change community”. And the UEA to recommend more involvement from statisticians.

Is this the first time a non-cause has determined an effect? Shall we reconsider the whole of physics then?

The suggestions of changing common practices is to improve the data itself, and make it more bulletproof. That is common. Recommending more involvement from statisticians will only improve the science, for or against the theory, it doesn’t matter.

It is a non-event in the sense that it has no bearing on the validity of the evidence for climate change.

@ Maurizio Morabito: If the most stinging criticism was “we don’t think it would change your results, but it would be nice if you worked more closely with statisticians”, then they are probably one of the best labs in the world. The same criticism could be applied to pretty much every lab in the world that uses statistics. Most scientists tend to stick to tried-and-true statistics techniques rather than the latest greatest wizz-bang techniques fresh from the mathematicians. Same goes for lots of other mathematical techniques. Wavelets have been around for a while, yet few people working in fields that require signal processing actually make extensive use of them. No I know even touches curvelets.

There were a few other criticisms, like being better organized, but once again that criticism could just as easily be applied to pretty much any lab in the world.

The criticisms against the lab could just as easily be applied to any lab I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few. So if you are willing to throw out their results based on this, you should throw out the rest of science as well. Otherwise you are being hypocritical, applying different standards to different fields depending on whether you like their conclusions or not.

Angus Martin (#147) and TheBlackCat (#148): presumably we can all agree that Climategate has been an event in the sense of causing certain criticisms to come out in the open, and better practices to be put in place, even if it has not invalidated the whole of climate science.

And by the way…I am not “willing to throw out their results based on this”. Actually, I really do not think it useful to talk in such “maximalistic” terms, the way Phil does too.

Imagine bumping a friend’s car against a wall, ruining the whole of a side, only to argue with him or her that it was a “non-event” because the car hasn’t been destroyed to pieces. Yeah, right…and perhaps it will mostly be a matter of repairing the bodywork…but: who would want to go around with a ruined bodywork? Acknowledge the issues, you’ll surely look less of a fool if you do that.

Calling people who disagree with you or who don’t understand your position “deniers” is a great way to ensure a well-reasoned discussion which facilitates the formation of a clear understanding of the issues involved.

No, wait, it’s unprofessional and incendiary. Tactics like these are a big part of why these issues are such a politicized muddle of bad facts and misinformation – on both sides of the aisle.

The problem is the “issues” being raised by the opponents are not the actual issues that were raised. There is acknowledgement that practices can be improved to make the science better. That’s very different than dishonest practices, or falsifying data.

This is more akin to denting a bumper than ruining an entire side of a car.

And the scientists are acknowledging the legitimate issues raised. The “controversy” over this is not where the actual issues are. The damage from that, of course, is not a non-issue, but it is also something scientists can do very little to repair. The crooks hacked computers and stole private data, the pundits then spun it into something it wasn’t.

The criticisms that have come out in the open are scientific ones, and has very little to do with the veracity of climate science. Those criticisms have also been drowned out by the false and unfounded criticisms of the opponents.

It is hardly a non-event, it has done a lot. The event is very real, but the issues typically raised by the opposition are non-issues on the whole. It is very apparent this is the case when they slam every single independent investigation as biased.

Do you understand colloquial English? I ask because “fun” often means just the opposite of its literal meaning, i.e. something bothersome — like arduous reduction of data to prepare for publication. In that context, “cunning plan” could simply mean a less time-consuming way to handle the data. Indeed, the email talks about avoiding a waste of time.

Consider this also: Would a private email say something sounds “cloak-and-dagger” but really isn’t? That is, would plotters tell each other, “It sounds like we’re plotting, but we really aren’t.” ?

One last thing: there is no such a thing as “the opposition”. The climate debate cannot be defined as opposing camps battling it out, because one can be convinced of AGW without being convinced of a +6C increase and untold catastrophes; and another can be unconvinced of AGW without being convinced that AGW is a big conspiracy by leftist elites and the United Nations.

Analogously, different people very well convinced of potential destruction by AGW may see Climategate differently, eg as a “non-event”, or a “marginal event”, or the event that suggests they’ve been manipulated by the scientists they trusted so much, before. And yet, all we can read in Phil’s blogs are the same old concepts presented as “this is the Truth” and “whoever disagrees is a denier” in a way every Pope would be proud of.

I really do not understand why the focus has always to be the Moncktons and Limbaughs of this world, as if showing them wrong would do anything to understand/prevent/mitigate/adapt to climate change.

The opposition is simply those who don’t think it’s happening. The proponents are the ones who do think it is happening. In that sense there are different camps – and you can see plenty of examples in this thread of each.

You also really have to be careful by what you mean by destruction. I think if we do nothing we’re going to see some very drastic things happening, and many of them very painful. I don’t think, however, that the world will vaporize in a stupendous show of red-hot air. Some genuinely believe that this could wipe out all life on Earth. Granted, if it runs away, it is possible Earth could become a second Venus, but even then some life would survive deep in the crust.

I do think human civilization as we operate it today will drastically change, and if we don’t try to soften that blow we’re going to see some collapses, violence and uprisings. At the same time, I don’t think global warming is the only thing we should be concerned about. It alone will not break human civilization as it is today. All factors together will.

And yes, if people see this as a major event as to the veracity of information regarding climate change, then they are flat-out a denier. It isn’t a non-event, as it is definitely affecting the debate outside of scientific circles, but it changes none of the conclusions of climate science. Those people pointing at this as if it proves them right about global warming being “a hoax” are indeed deniers.

I don’t see the same “Popishness” in Phil’s blogs that you do on this topic.

The focus has been on the Moncktons and Limbaughs because they have been the most vocal opponents, and the most effective influencers, in the opposition. There simply isn’t much scientific backing in the “things aren’t even warming” crowd, and solar scientists have flatly stated that solar activity is not the cause of this (decreasing solar activity in the last decade still has not mitigated warming). Until scientifically verifiable evidence pops up stating a conclusion differently, and withstands peer reviewing, then the focus will remain on the Moncktons and Limbaughs.

To me there is a difference between skeptics and deniers, skeptics will look at evidence and decide accordingly. Deniers will repeatedly restate flawed arguments and debunked claims simply because they don’t like the political implications of the scientific findings. Despite my support for the AGW theory, I will switch to NGW (natural global warming) if and when the data begins pointing toward it.

One can make a definitive decision while remaining skeptical. I remain skeptical, I still question it, the reason I support it is because from the data I have seen, and my understanding of it, there is no reason to feel it isn’t the case.

I think you misunderstood Ken B’s reference in #103. If I’m right, he refers to an episode of ST:TNG where Cdr. Data manages to send himself a message across “windings” of a temporal loop, thus reminding himself of the proper course of action to break the loop. The message consists of only the digit “3”.

That’s not much of an explanation, but I won’t bore everyone with more.

Do you understand colloquial English? I ask because “fun” often means just the opposite of its literal meaning, i.e. something bothersome — like arduous reduction of data to prepare for publication. In that context, “cunning plan” could simply mean a less time-consuming way to handle the data. Indeed, the email talks about avoiding a waste of time.

Consider this also: Would a private email say something sounds “cloak-and-dagger” but really isn’t? That is, would plotters tell each other, “It sounds like we’re plotting, but we really aren’t.” ? ”

Chris you mean sort of like when Al Gore said “It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.” (or was that Bill Clinton? gee it is hard to keep the scandals apart…)

Yes, Chris, if you take words out of context and twist things around you could infer something benign.

Remember all the fun we had last year over 1995 global temperatures,
with early release of information (via Oz), “inventing” the December
monthly value, letters to Nature etc etc?

I think we should have a cunning plan about what to do this year,
simply to avoid a lot of wasted time.

I have been discussing with David P and suggest the following:

1. By 20 Dec we will have land and sea data up to Nov

2. David (?) computes the December land anomaly based on 500hPa
heights up to 20 Dec.

3. We assume that Dec SST anomaly is the same as Nov

4. We can therefore give a good estimate of 1996 global temps by 20
Dec

5. We feed this selectively to Nick Nuttall (who has had this in the
past and seems now to expect special treatment) so that he can write
an article for the silly season. We could also give this to Neville
Nicholls??

6. We explain that data is provisional and how the data has been
created so early (ie the estimate for Dec) and also

7. We explain why the globe is 0.23k (or whatever the final figure is)
cooler than 95 (NAO reversal, slight La Nina). Also that global annual
avg is only accuirate to a few hundredths of a degree (we said this
last year – can we be more exact, eg PS/MS 0.05K or is this to big??)

8. FROM NOW ON WE ANSWER NO MORE ENQUIRIES ABOUT 1996 GLOBAL TEMPS BUT
EXPLAIN THAT IT WILL BE RELEASED IN JANUARY.

9. We relesae the final estimate on 20 Jan, with a joint UEA/MetO
press release. It may not evoke any interest by then.

10. For questions after the release to Nuttall, (I late Dec, early
Jan) we give the same answer as we gave him.

Are you happy with this, or can you suggest something better (ie
simpler)? I know it sound a bit cloak-and-dagger but its just meant to
save time in the long run.

Can some one ’splain to me how it is thermodynamically possible for gases that constitute 1% of a mass have enough energy to heat the remaining 99% when the system cools?

Box, that one is going to take a real CAGW theologian. The magic of CAGW to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and do so in a stealth manner so that no heat signature can be observed is truly a miracle. Let us also not forget that CAGW contradicts the ERBE data.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics deals with isolated systems, which the Earth is not. The energy on Earth’s surface and in its atmosphere is both escaping, and being replenished. Earth’s systems can affect that.

But the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so far as I understand it, doesn’t apply to Earth. As Earth is an open system, and the 2nd law deals with isolated systems (so far as the scientific community knows thus far).

Someone hasn’t taken even an introductory physics or chemistry course, have they…

Can some one ’splain to me how it is thermodynamically possible for gases that constitute 1% of a mass have enough energy to heat the remaining 99% when the system cools?

It isn’t, but then again that does no bear even the slightest resemblance whatsoever to global warming.

Ah, the deniers have been taking lessons from the creationists. Please explain exactly how CAGW violates the second law of thermodynamics.

This is news to you? They are not called denialists because they don’t agree on the science, they are called denialists because they use the same strategies used by evolution denialsts (which is what creationists really are), holocaust denialists, HIV denialists, and every other denialist group on the planet.

Arguments with Paul is particularly mostly consist of him pulling his arguments straight out of the creationist playbook one after another. Out-of-context quotes, 2nd law of thermodynamics, that’s just the beginning. He’ll just go down the list. I’ve pointed this out to him before, as best as I can tell this only made him think better of creationists.

I still would love to see some real evidence to the claims of you and every other denier on this website that Phil is being credulous about this, troll.

Outside of climate change, Phil pretty much exemplifies skeptical scientific thought. That being that case, and seeing how more than a vast majority of the climatologist community supports such ideas, and there being pretty much no evidence in the camp of the opposition…I don’t think it’s even remotely unreasonable to decide climate change is caused, in large part, by humans.

I know his work, I know how he works. He has precedence. You do not. I don’t know you. You toss ad hominems all day long, and provide no real data to back up your assertions.

Being an armchair scientist does not give you the same credentials as an actual scientist, especially when it is as steeped in ideology as yours.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics deals with isolated systems, which the Earth is not. The energy on Earth’s surface and in its atmosphere is both escaping, and being replenished. Earth’s systems can affect that.

But the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so far as I understand it, doesn’t apply to Earth. As Earth is an open system, and the 2nd law deals with isolated systems (so far as the scientific community knows thus far).

Someone hasn’t taken even an introductory physics or chemistry course, have they…”

Now take that same thought Angus and apply it to CO2 & the greenhouse effect and the earth’s atmosphere.

Actually, no. It’s applicable to all systems. One statement of the 2nd law is that the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease, but that doesn’t mean those are the only systems to which it can be applied.

Relax Angus. I happen to like Phil. Although I disagree with his faith in Global Warming I believe him to be a really good guy. I do not come to BA for the left-wing political rants or the Global Warming religious sermons. I come to BA for Phil’s Astronomy & science posts as well as the amusing other entries he has provided us.

The CAGW posts are the only posts that move me enough for a reply. I take the abuse, the ad hominems etc all with a shrug of the shoulder. It doesn’t bother me if some CAGW Alarmist goes off on me with one of their religious rants. Please don’t take anything to heart. Between the banter there can be discovery, at least that it is what I have found for myself.

And now he calls his opponents religious, ignores requests for evidence, criticizing others for ad hominem attacks while ignoring his own constant stream of them, and paints himself as a martyr beset by attackers. I told you he would just keep copying creationist tactics, and he did so in short order.

I frankly don’t care if you like Phil or not, I’m just a little baffled you you can shrug off the entire scientific body of evidence, and shrug off the opinions of a scientist, because you don’t agree with their political implications. And I’d hate to break it to you, but your camp started with the ad hominems first, and you are the one who immediately launches into “It’s a religion zomg!” rants as soon as a global warming topic pops up.

Global Warming, as much as you’d like to believe, is not a left-wing political issue. I’d love to see your explanation as to how that exists.

Oh also: global warming posts are science posts.

You really need to stop calling global warming theory a religion if you can’t provide evidence that the data supporting it is wrong. We are all still waiting.

And now he calls his opponents religious. I told you he would just keep copying creationist tactics.

“It’s amusing that you’re using the same terminology toward scientists and proponents of scientific theories that the anti-evolution crowd is using. No one takes you seriously when you pull out those cards. Just look at the IDers. They also claim that the courts in cases like Kitzmiller v. Dover are biased towards evolution, and a government agenda to turn Americans into secular zombies.”

– Funny how he doesn’t think these kinds of things warrant responses.

The entire global warming denialist camp is acting just like the evolution deniers.

In fact, they’re both tied pretty intrinsically in modern American politics:

And now he calls his opponents religious, ignores requests for evidence, criticizing others for ad hominem attacks while ignoring his own constant stream of them, and paints himself as a martyr beset by attackers. I told you he would just keep copying creationist tactics, and he did so in short order.

What possible evidence to the faithful believers in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming could ever be given? The global climate does not respond in the manner of your dogma but in response to the various natural climate variations. 1998 proof of CO2 global warming… Not ENSO + PDO. 2010 hottest ever, proof of global warming… Not ENSO. Don’t look now PDO has flipped.

173. Angus Martin Says:
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 pm

You really need to stop calling global warming theory a religion if you can’t provide evidence that the data supporting it is wrong. We are all still waiting.

Angus, I feel for you. I know after the ‘cough cough non-event’ climategate whitewashes that outraged even lukewarmer scientists to speak out against the global warming industry.

Back home in the states this 4th of July I understand many of you will be skiing/shredding on slopes that normally do not have snow. Granted I know the media rules, cold anomalies are weather and warm anomalies are climate….

Evidence? What evidence? That has been the question.

Where is there any indication that anthropogenic activity has altered global climate in any measurable manner?

I cannot prove to you that the comet you wish to ride to your Utopia will not do so if you do not at least identify it’s position. I can continue to console you after each and every ‘changing goalposts’ as Phil warned. Perhaps tomorrow the earth will be a fireball, OMG, hide the children.

As I said before, “relax”.

The goalposts are being moved way out there by your Bishops:

AGW tipping point: end of world moved to 2200
The Independent has published some optimistic news yesterday:

Scientists ‘expect climate tipping point’ by 2200

They asked 14 climate scientists what is the length of the Chinese emperor’s nose and when will the tipping point destroy the Earth. None of them had any clue but the person who asked those questions apparently thought that he gets a very accurate, scientific answer if he computes the average of the 14 answers.

The authors of a PNAS preprint decided that the climatic end of the world wouldn’t be in 1999, as the United Nations announced in 1989, but in 2200, and they organized an interview with 14 “luminaries”.”

Can some one ’splain to me how it is thermodynamically possible for gases that constitute 1% of a mass have enough energy to heat the remaining 99% when the system cools?

It isn’t, but then again that does no bear even the slightest resemblance whatsoever to global warming.

Ah, the deniers have been taking lessons from the creationists. Please explain exactly how CAGW violates the second law of thermodynamics.

This is news to you? They are not called denialists because they don’t agree on the science, they are called denialists because they use the same strategies used by evolution denialsts (which is what creationists really are), holocaust denialists, HIV denialists, and every other denialist group on the planet.

Arguments with Paul is particularly mostly consist of him pulling his arguments straight out of the creationist playbook one after another. Out-of-context quotes, 2nd law of thermodynamics, that’s just the beginning. He’ll just go down the list. I’ve pointed this out to him before, as best as I can tell this only made him think better of creationists.”

@blackcat I have read the above several times, other than a typical outburst from a follower of the church of CAGW were you actually trying to say anything?

I have read the above several times, other than a typical outburst from a follower of the church of CAGW were you actually trying to say anything?

Thank you for once again proving my point.

Good! I would not want to mis-characterize you as anything but a devout follower of the church of Catastrophic Global Warming ranting and raving about the end of the world demanding everyone come up with evidence that the end of the world is not near.

70. sHx Says: “Seriously speaking, we are killing the planet. Increased CO2 will cause widespread devastation. Glaciers are retreating. Arctic is disappearing. Antartica is melting.* [SNIP!] in worst case scenarios perhaps billions of death are among the risks documented by the best scientific opinion as represented in IPCC reports.”

OMG sHx that sounds like it has the makings of an academy award winning Sci-Fi cult classic. You could even use one of Mike Mann’s or Phil Jones’ debunked hockey stick graphs to pull in the CAGW faithful(they would eat it up!).

Nah, its already been done.Twice actually. 😉

First as Emmerich’s very silly but spectacular SFX disasterporn movie The Day After Tomorrow then as Gore’s dull and narcisstic error-riddled “documentary” disasterporn movie The Inconvenient Truth.

Besides for the majority of people today, Global Warming is *so* yesterdays news and the fad of concern about it has been replaced by other more immediate and important issues like the economic recovery or lack thereof.

The general public have decided already and they (unlike the majority of scientists esp. climatologists) have decided CAGW or whatever Global Warming / climate change / the Greenhouse Effect is called these days is bunk. Agree or not that’s the reality.

They’ve been told by the enviro-lefties since the 1980’s that the world is ending anyday now because “Yahhhh! Booo! OMG! We’re so nasty to the planet!” & they’re not buying it anymore. They’ve turned off this whole issue & written it off as another Y2K or Swine flu type scare that’ll come to nothing.

(Justly or not those memes are out there. Moral of the story: If scientists predict some disaster then there’d durn well better *be* one or else!) 😉

The alarm was sounded too early and too shrill and is now being collectively ignored. The people aren’t listening and for the politicians taking action to stop CAGW (or whatever) is now a vote-loser not a vote winner and therefore the reality is that nothing will be done. Nothing effective anyhow.

Time will tell whether that’s a mistake or not. Time will tell whether Inhofe or Gore was right about this. (To use the main political figureheads for each position as literary shorthand.)

If there’s a really huge disaster indisputably caused by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then opinions might possibly change but it *will* take a real disaster wrecking thousands or more lives. After that if it happens then we’ll likely see an acceptance of the CAGW science and a flurry of action that will be desperate, harsh and last minute. It’ll probably be too little too late and we’ll have to adapt as humans have done to past climate change events before.

If more cases of exaggerated claims and dodgy dealings come (or appear to come) to light that further besmirch the already tarnished – fairly or not – public reputations of the climatologists pushing CAGW & if there are more retractions of alarmist claims that shouldn’t have been made in the first place (eg. melting Himalayan glaciers, dead Amazon prediction by Greenpeace eco-nuts in the IPCC report) OTOH … Well, its already done severe damage to the cause and that could become terminal.

A reputation is a terrible thing to lose and very hard to regain once lost. Climategate has done its damage in too many minds to be called a non-event or be brushed under the carpet or whitewashed.

Mud sticks. The “Climategate scientists” are probably best off keeping out of the public eye for decades and turning to other studies because their credibility in the public eye is now minimal. Universities and organisations would be well advised from a PR & politics (if not ethical or legal) viewpoint to wash their hands of them. Like it or not, anything they say will pretty much be rejected by the public – as opposed to the BA & some commentators here. For Phil Jones, Mike Mann & a number of other “Climategate scientists” – their day is done. Sad & unjust maybe but
true.

————

* Antartica can’t melt – its made of rock and is a continent. Well I guess it’ll melt eventually when the Sun becomes a Red Giant star and really changes our climate by turning the entire planet into a ball of lava or even vapour. However that’s still about five billion years away.

^ Antartica’s *ice sheet* and the polar icecaps are another story of course. Geological prehistory suggests that Earth is currently unusual in having icecaps as it didn’t have them for most of our planet’s existence. (Snowball Earth & Ice Age aeons excepted.)

I see that those two jolly fellows Lonny “The Libertarian” Eachus and Maurizio Morabito, two of the most laughable of the deniers have discovered the killing blow to AGW(#146). All of climate science must be trembling. But we’re still laughing at you both for your blinkeredness.

Obama stopped saying he wanted to lead America down the green path that Spain walked after ‘people’ had the nerve to read that Spain had not only stumbled but they did an end over end landed flat and said there is no way we can subsidize not ready for prime time solar and wind power. Of course this came after Obama was ridiculed by most of the world during and after the failures to goose step as:

66. Damon Says:
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:42 am
(paraphrasing sorry Damon but you opened the door)

the world wants us to march after turning our backs on democracy. The burden of having faith knowing a Voltairian benevolent dictator is the only thing that can save not only mankind but the world must be overbearing. Not for nothing but this lack of aspiring to Spain’s Green failures came only after the laughter of Obama wanting to aspire to Denmark’s highest in Europe’s electricity rates.

Realistically, what is it that your church demands of you?

Stop and think. There are more than 1.5 billion people living in this world without electricity and running water.

With tens of millions actually perishing every year(in desperate need of heat, electricity and running water), what is it that you want the world to do based on this unsubstantiated faith you have that:

AGW tipping point: end of world moved to 2200
The Independent has published some optimistic news yesterday:

Scientists ‘expect climate tipping point’ by 2200

They asked 14 climate scientists what is the length of the Chinese emperor’s nose and when will the tipping point destroy the Earth. None of them had any clue but the person who asked those questions apparently thought that he gets a very accurate, scientific answer if he computes the average of the 14 answers.

The authors of a PNAS preprint decided that the climatic end of the world wouldn’t be in 1999, as the United Nations announced in 1989, but in 2200, and they organized an interview with 14 “luminaries”.”http://tinyurl.com/3yatjgu

Back in the mid to late 1980’s growing up I was a believer CAGW back it was still called “The Greenhouse Effect”.

I was later utterly disconvinced of it and made skeptical of “climate change” after reading Prof. Ian Plimer’s skeptical book on CAGW and by personally attending Plimer’s lectures and meeting with the man himself. (For the record, I think Plimer comes across as quite convincing and sincere in what he says even if his book does contain some errors.)

Since then I have been – very reluctantly – convinced mainly via discussions on this blog that, yes, the GW part is probably real despite the oddity of 1998-2005 being hotter than recent years.

I am also willing to concede that yes the ‘A” part is on the balance of plausibility more than likely accurate too.

However, I’m still NOT entirely convinced by the ‘C’ part.

Will AGW really be *that* Catastrophic?

Might AGW have benefits too that off-set its problems?

Will it be anywhere near as civilisation destroying as the CAGWists say & might their jeremiads be looked back upon with the same “well that was a big deal – NOT!” disdain that we, whether rightly or wrongly, mostly have for the Y2K bug and swine flu fears today?

I think it is always legitimate to question the science and the scientists behind it.

I think skeptics like Penn (& Burt Rutan & Harrison Schmitt) play an important role and that having opposing voices against the mainstream is often a good & useful thing that make sure we do get things as right as possible and science should be transparent and open to scrutiny.

It may be true that the “Climategate” scandal was in fact all smoke and no fire. But I’m glad & think it was right that the emails were made public.

The CAGW side are asking for some fairly enormous changes and painful sacrifices from the rest of the community – all around the world. The least they can do is allow their evidence (even the flaws and warts and all) to be fully scrutinised – even and indeed perhaps especially by those that are hostile to their cause.

Post Climategate my understanding (which could be mistaken natch but anyhow) is that the level of certainty and the level of concern regarding the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming has greatly diminished among the general public and that the view of the “skeptics” is in the majority and certainly control the political debate at present.

Scientists, sadly, by-&-large are increasingly percieved as too politically or financially motivated on this – whether we like it or not.

Plus there’s the fact that the Global Financial Crisis and many economic issues are taking priority for people and far-off CAGW is likely a concern for when other more immediate “hip-pocket”” issues are in play – worrying about “Global Warming” is essentially a luxury reserved for prosperous times.

Most people just don’t want new taxes and laws.

People never do but *especially* not now and, in reality, governments are NOT going to impose such measures to fight CAGW without first having evidence that is blindingly, overwhelmingly, in disputably, withoutr even the faintest shadow-of-a-doubt in-your-face compelling and public support.

Reality is that we just won’t take action on CAGW until there is really NO doubt at all – not just in the scientific community but among the broader public.

Most likely this means NOT until something incredibly dramatic has happened and, probably, almost certainly in fact, not until it is too late for it to make enough difference *if* the most extreme (& even some higher end “moderate”) CAGW models are right.

That’s the harsh truth.

The climate change debate has already ha damajor impactr in Australian politics – theformer Opposition leader lost his leadership to a climatechange skeptic for agreeing to the Rudd’s proposed ETS scheme.

Then when the new opposition leader blocked that ETS, Rudd backflipped and postponed it and *That* decision was afactor in Rudd losing his Prime Ministership to Julia Gillard who has softpedalled theissue and inissted ongettinga community consensus before taking further actionon “climate change.”

Politics not science will determine what we do – and the political view at themoment is that (C)AGW is inthetoohard basket or unpopular and not a priority issue or one that action can really be taken on.

I think it is legitimate to ask if the potential future benefits in slowing the supposed C(?)-AGW are really and *truly* worth a hell of a lot of severe economic pain right now. There are real people’s livilihoods and national interests at stake here and that should NOT be forgotten.

Nor should it be forgotten that any Western Carbon cuts – however painfully obtained and however many people’s lives get ruined in the process – will need to be added to by even more major cuts made by nations like China and India if they aren’t going to be a totally waste of time because those far larger more populous, developing polluters will quickly make up any C02 emission shortfall.

Sad reality is that the West is serious about stopping CAGW then it cannot ALLOW China or India or other rising nations in Asia and the third world ( Eg. Brazil, Korea, etc .. ) to become like us. To develop.

Having a prosperous economy that gives your citizens happiness and a chance to live well and provide opportunity and hope for the future means having a high carbon footprint.

There’s just NO way around that yet unfortunately.

Which raises the very grim and serious questions of:

Can we stop them & do we have the right to?

How far are people here willing to go to end the hypothetical CAGW threat?

If CAGW is really as certain and as bad as predicted – if we can’t all live a Western or near-Westernised standard of life then it may, horribly, come down to a case of who takes out who first.

*If* we don’t get *them*, and *if* the CAGW predictions are as sure as some think then we have reason to fear them getting us *first*.

The Greens argue the planet is over-populated, we effectively need what could be called with gallows humour, a “Human cull” and that a population crash via the usual four horseman will happen regardless whether we start and control this or have it happen in uncontrolled “natural” circumstances.

So, if it comes down to it who do you guys want as the leading world powers – the United States or China? Your nation(s) or theirs? Given just these options would you wish to be the side doing the genocide or doing the compelling to misery and hopelessness for the foreseeable future for generations to come or the side getting exterminated or forced into perpetual poverty, misery and hopelessness?

I really don’t like this idea myself.

I wish there was a better alternative.

But the bleak logic above is inexorable and hard to see any way around.

If CO2 emissions are necessary for a good quality of life & prosperous happy nations – and they are – if we have to cut back Co2 on a planetary scale as the CAGWists argue – then billions of extra people developing as they wish into high Co2 emitters = Catastrophic Global Warming.

Ergo, we cannot all emit Co2 at civilised levels and have prosperous happy nations.

Therefore do we want our nations to be forced to poverty and misery – or will we be forced to make other nations live in poverty in misery?

Can we co-operate & compromise? Not really as the climate summit fiasco at Copenhagen proved and if there’s only so much to go around then we’ll fight for our own interests as is human nature 101.

So I really hope the CAGWists are wrong about the “Catastrophic” nature of AGW and that it isn’t that bad or we find a realistic technological cure. (BTW. no, renewables aren’t really – they’ve been tried and tested since the 1970’s oil crunch and found wanting – its nuclear with its attendant issues or something else new and radical and probably likley to have its own drawbacks.)

Otherwise, if I were a cold-hearted general on either side (which I’m not!) I’d be contemplating my first strike(s) about now.

Please don’t blame me for pointing out this grim reality please. I don’t like it either.

I’m NOT actually advocating war or genocide rather than carbon laws and taxes.

I, personally, do NOT *want* any of this to occur & I find the thought of this logically realistic scenario scary and depressing. Very.

I’m just saying I think that this is what will quite likely happen regardless whether I or you or anyone wants it to occur or not.

Because of basic logic, because of human nature, because of harsh realpolitik realities.

I’ve just followed where logic combined with a realistic understanding of human nature and economics leads.

PS. I’m kind of hoping some one will reassuringly convince me that I’m wrong about this view expressed here so please do try!

I agree with much of what you say: the globe cannot support a Western lifestyle for the current world population. Economic growth is therefore an evil, as it will always increase resource use: if all power were wind power, we’d increase energy use to such an extent that the manufacture of turbines would deplete resources. What we need to abandon is the notion that “prosperous happy nations” cannot exist without economic growth and rampant consumption. Why do we permit the frivolous manufacture of consumer items from non-renewable resources? Why the cell phones, ipads, and plastic vuvuzelas? Why private motorized vehicles? In my opinion, we should abandon the economic-growth model and all resource use should be subjected to strict international scrutiny.

@ ^ 186 Paul : Nice idea but can you see enough voters seeing the sense in what you’re suggesting and supporting such moves in sufficent time for it to make any difference? Can you see the average citizen voting for such radical changes? I can’t.

CORRECTED from part II – # 183 :

The climate change debate has already had a major impact on Australian politics – the former Opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, lost his leadership last year to a climate change skeptic, Tony Abbott for agreeing to give way and support Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed ETS scheme. This was shortly after the failure of the Copenhagen summit to amount to anything.

Then when the new opposition leader blocked that ETS in our Senate, PM Rudd backflipped and postponed it despite having oc ecalled cliamte change “our greatest moral challenge.” *That* decision was a factor in Rudd losing his Prime Ministership to Julia Gillard who has soft pedalled the issue and insisted on getting a community consensus before taking further action on “climate change.”

Sadly, Politics not Science *will* determine what we do or don’t do with regard to climate change.

The political view at the moment is that (C?)AGW is in the too hard basket. It is unpopular, tricky and not a priority issue or one that action can really be taken on.

Sorry for the typos & wordiness etc .. here.

***

Summarised in a nutshell(~ish) :

I think Anthropogenic Global Warming is real.

I’m not so sure how “Catastrophic” it will really be.

Political & economic realities are going to make it well nigh impossible to take unified global action on (C?)AGW and domestic means alone cannot work in isolation because other nations will quickly make up any cuts a single nation painfully makes. We need to get *every* nation taking action or it will only disadvantage the nations that do and benefit that ones that don’t.

Therefore we won’t do enough in time to slow (C)AGW down much let alone stop it.

The vast majority of people on Earth wish to live a positive, happy, capitalist Western lifestyle which requires a huge carbon footprint.

There’s too many people on Earth for everybody to do that.

Thus *somebody* (& *Who* is it going to be?!?) simply has to miss out. They have to be condemmned to horrible poverty and hopelessness for the forseeable future.

How do we get around that? Looks like we just can’t.

Where does that leave us?

Grim future scenarios – take your pick :

1. We all die fighting or trying to avoid the CAGW inevitabilities & disasters because nobody can make the hardest, most horrible decisions?

2. The enemies of Western civilisation destroy us so theycan live at the current Western level of comfort and opportunity and freedom. This means our culture and our natiosn are destroyed and condemned to poverty and suffering for FSM know show long.

3. We somehow take them (notably China and India the two most populous and rapidly developing nations) out of the equation. Somehow. It won’t be nice or pleasant or ethical but our culture survives, we get to have hope and quality of life for ourselves in the future.(At an agonisingly high price to them & to our own consciences.)

That’s the terrible, depressing path that logic and thinking realistically about this takes me on.

I wish I didn’t think this way about this CAGW issue.

I wish I saw some better, more hopeful alternatives to offer – like that the utopian hippy solutions some talk about here will work – but, realistically, I just don’t.

I *so* HOPE I’m wrong about this.

I also really hope that we get AGW and NOT Catastrophic AGW -that we do find its been exxagerated because if not, FSM help us all.

The mobile phone that fits in the front shirt pocket of the guy next to you was once the size of a shoe box and before that was attached to a wall. Today you can use it to communicate and perform commerce on the Internet.

The farmer’s fields you see on the side of the road yield many more times the food stocks then in the time of your grandfather. China and India are bringing electricity and running water to millions every year. etc, etc, etc

The air that I breath in my home as well as the air that I breath outside is so much cleaner than when I was a child.

Life and the world in general is getting so much better.

Look at what science and technology has done to bring prosperity to what was once despair in so many regions of the world.

Now look what CAGW in the guise of science has done to your outlook on life.

OMG there are so many good things and breakthroughs that are happening every single day.

With a handful of dollars women in India through micro-loans are starting businesses. Through advances in agriculture one woman in Africa has turned subsistence farmers into international exporters. Mutiply that by 10’s of thousands and you might approximate the tip of the iceberg.

Granted I have my pet peeves but I do not believe that the earth has known prosperity as it existent today anytime in the past.

I cannot promise but I do believe that the sun will rise tomorrow and I believe that tomorrow the world will be a better place just like today was better than yesterday.

Messier Tidy Upper you need to get out more and take a look at all the great things that are being done today for people that five, ten or 20 years ago would have no hope of survival.

I suppose I should be grateful that you replied to my question about the wattsupwiththat posting about Venus’s temperature but after reading your reply, I’m not so sure. You say that most of the assumptions in the post are wrong without giving any actual examples, then go on to present a false version of the argument which you make fun of (I believe that tactic is called a straw man). The point you raise is covered in the 450+ comments, where it is discussed at length. I’m not sure which side wins in the debate but at least there IS a debate and not just name-calling. (‘Deniers!’)

I presume from your reply that you didn’t properly read the post or replies so I am left none the wiser as to whether Venus’s atmospheric pressure is largely responsible for its’ temperature or not.

Val said:“…There’s nothing more dangerous than true-believers.
(..)
When you call a scientific skeptic a denier, you have abandoned rationality and delved into religion. Don your robes, I guess, and feel confident in your hate-mongering.”

Paul in Sweden said: “Don’t let climategate shake your faith. You have a consensus.
Debate over!
Lalalalala you can’t hear us….”
(..)
“You no longer have to take the words of the priests and the bishops of your church of CAGW as gospel.”
(..)
“Depending on the prevailing natural climate variations you and other faithful may sing in the chorus for 20 or more years.”
(..)
” Box, that one is going to take a real CAGW theologian.”

Scientists are not theologians.
Science operates differently from religion.
NASA is not a cult.

Yet climate deniers endlessly bleat about science being a religion.
Why?
Because that’s what deniers do. It’s a favourite rhetorical tactic of theirs.
Creationists do it. Anti-vaccers do it. HIV deniers do it.

Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma
“Since the ideas proposed by deniers do not meet rigorous scientific standards, they cannot hope to compete against the mainstream theories. They cannot raise the level of their beliefs up to the standards of mainstream science; therefore they attempt to lower the status of the denied science down to the level of religious faith, characterizing scientific consensus as scientific dogma . As one HIV denier quoted in Maggiore’s book remarked,

“There is classical science, the way it’s supposed to work, and then there’s religion. I regained my sanity when I realized that AIDS science was a religious discourse. The one thing I will go to my grave not understanding is why everyone was so quick to accept everything the government said as truth. Especially the central myth: the cause of AIDS is known.”

Others suggest that the entire spectrum of modern medicine is a religion.

Deniers also paint themselves as skeptics working to break down a misguided and deeply rooted belief. They argue that when mainstream scientists speak out against the scientific “orthodoxy,” they are persecuted and dismissed. For example, HIV deniers make much of the demise of Peter Duesberg’s career, claiming that when he began speaking out against HIV as the cause of AIDS, he was “ignored and discredited” because of his dissidence. South African President Mbeki went even further, stating: “In an earlier period in human history, these [dissidents] would be heretics that would be burnt at the stake!”.

HIV deniers accuse scientists of quashing dissent regarding the cause of AIDS, and not allowing so-called “alternative” theories to be heard. However, this claim could be applied to any well-established scientific theory that is being challenged by politically motivated pseudoscientific notions—for example, creationist challenges to evolution.”

Jimmyboy, ‘Climate Science’ as worshiped today bears little resemblance to actual science. I do however understand the parties and grants are much more lucrative though.

I wasn’t 100% sure, but not I see you trot out the “conferences in exotic places” argument I already debunked over a month ago. So I guess you are the same closed-minded Paul from back then.

Let me repeat it: most branches of science have such conferences, and they happen in exotic locations fairly often. That is not unique to climate science, it is normal, something you would already know if you were even remotely familiar with how science is done. The fact that you don’t know this shows that any claims that you understand science are false.

Your making statements like these only demonstrate you are completely unfamiliar with how science is done. Your repeating these statements after they have already been debunked shows you are not interested in a legitimate discussion, you are just pushing an agenda. Saying stuff that has already been shown to be false to you is not the sort of tactic used by someone trying to promote the truth, it is the tactic of a denier who is pushing an agenda. There is a word for saying something you know to be wrong.

If there is no evidence, no records, no calculations that can be duplicated it is not science.

There is massive amounts of evidence, massive amounts of records, and massive amounts of calculations, enough to have practically the entire scientific community, and essentially everyone with relevant expertise, convinced. Heck, even the Petroleum Geologists, who have the largest financial incentive to prevent acceptance of AGW, were going to quit their organization in droves because it had a statement doubting AGW.

So has it actually occurred it you that maybe, if so many people who understand the issues and understand science far better than you, even people with financial incentives to refute AGW, are still convinced, maybe, just maybe, the problem is with you and not with the science? Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the entire scientific community is not filled with complete and total idiots?

Let me ask you this again: what would convince you that global warming is real? Note that it should be a standard that, if applied across all of science, will not result in rejecting most of science. For instance the standard creationist demand for a “smoking gun” that you used before, if applied consistently, would result in tossing out the vast majority of science, including science required for building the computers we are using right now.

So I am telling you now: if you demand a standard of evidence that few areas of science could meet, including areas of science you depend on every day, then that shows that you are anti-science, completely closed-minded, and a hypocrite. So think hard about whether what you ask for, if you even bother to reply, is actually reasonable in light of the standards used by other areas of science you accept.

Of course I have already explained this all to you, but you ignored me then and obviously ignored pretty much everything I said in that discussion.

@ Messier Tidy Upper: There is one serious flaw that negates your entire argument. The problem is that fossil fuels are a finite resource. We are going to run out, so we are going to need to find replacements. So it is not a question of whether society will lose its dependency on fossil fuels, it is a question of when and how.

By and large, I agree with most of what you’re saying, and sadly it will be politics and not science that determines how we deal with this issue. And sadly no one is going to be willing to give up their silver spoons and cushions to make things better (this is, of course, more than just global warming). However, I have one question.

What do we define as catastrophic?

I don’t think all the world’s going to end, or we’re going to wipe out humanity, or even that we’ll wipe out human civilization, but I do think we’re going to get lots of people killed as a result of this, and I do think we’re going to have some extremely painful times as a result of climate change. Not catastrophic, mind you, just that this period of nice growth we’re seeing, isn’t going to be so nice.

I also don’t think the Western world will suffer too much from it, though some cities may be threatened, and some farmland may disappear.

Of course if you factor in water consumption, then the bulk of America’s farmland is in great danger of becoming all-but useless in the coming years without some seriously drastic measures to continue to deliver water to those regions.

What in the world is a “lukewarm” scientist? Also, your link (I’ve told you this before, but you seemed to have not listened) isn’t working. It’s broken.

Back home in the states this 4th of July I understand many of you will be skiing/shredding on slopes that normally do not have snow. Granted I know the media rules, cold anomalies are weather and warm anomalies are climate….

– I’d like to see some citation for that one. And yes, extreme and unusual weather as a result of climate change was predicted as far back as the 1980s. That’s not “the media rules”, that’s the science. The science that is currently being proven right.

Where is there any indication that anthropogenic activity has altered global climate in any measurable manner?

– You look at the links to scientific papers throughout this thread, and you’ll see it. And of course the fact that those changes are tied with extreme weather events is direct evidence that anthropogenic activity has altered the climate.

What in the world do you think climate is? And hint: it’s not weather! Even if there is snow on peaks where there shouldn’t be, that doesn’t disprove global warming (as much as the deniers like to claim it does)…because that’s weather. It’s not climate. Further, that happening in one region is not global. America is not the world.

I cannot prove to you that the comet you wish to ride to your Utopia will not do so if you do not at least identify it’s position. I can continue to console you after each and every ‘changing goalposts’ as Phil warned. Perhaps tomorrow the earth will be a fireball, OMG, hide the children.

– There hasn’t been changing goal posts. The science has been advanced, that’s what science does. We’ve perfected our predictions, and they will continue to be perfected. If you think changing predictions is proof that it’s false, then you might as well just dump all your science-based products and live off the land, because you’ve just claimed that all science is wrong.

Also, point to me where I’ve said that the world will turn into a giant fireball, or even that it will destroy us. In fact I believe I made a comment further up the thread that directly speaks against that sort of talk. But don’t let facts stop your rhetoric.

The authors of a PNAS preprint decided that the climatic end of the world wouldn’t be in 1999, as the United Nations announced in 1989, but in 2200, and they organized an interview with 14 “luminaries”.”

– Can I perhaps see where the UN claimed the “world would end” in 1999 as a result of climate change? Also you see this?

None of them had any clue but the person who asked those questions apparently thought that he gets a very accurate, scientific answer if he computes the average of the 14 answers.

– Ahhhhh so 14 answers! Further, none of those answers were peer reviewed or evaluated by other scientists, so why are you claiming that climate scientists have changed the goal posts? Instead your “reporter” (who is not named, surprise surprise) claims to take an average of the 14 answers (which he did not list) and say that that is what the scientists believe!

Do you actually fall for garbage like this?

Here’s how it goes in science:

There is a consensus in a field, be it physics, climate science, biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc. Most scientists agree that this is the likely answer. People come up and say that answer isn’t right. Scientists ask them why. Those people provide data, evidence and argument against the prevailing opinion. If the opposing argument is found to be more bulletproof than the prevailing opinion, then the field will alter its opinion to the better one. It happens all the time, including in climate science.

Here’s how deniers think it works:

There is a consensus in the field. Most scientists agree with it because they will get more grant money that way. People come up and say that consensus isn’t right. Scientists ask them why. The opposition then screams that there is no evidence for the consensus in the first place, and it is all a lie so “liberals” can gain more power and take over the lives of everyday people. Scientists get painted as villains, and the opposition brands themselves “scientific skeptics”.

Evolution deniers use precisely those same tactics against biologists. Climate change deniers use precisely those same tactics against climatologists.

Oh and finally, Paul, and I know this is difficult for you to grasp – but climate change is happening. Is humanity doing it? The evidence points toward yes. But to deny climate change is happening is so chiefly absurd and moronic that it makes you look like Ray Comfort.

And what is defined as catastrophic in this case, of course, is also unclear.

Also, Messier, one solution to the “there’s just too many people” truth (and it is a truth), is worldwide support for birth control implementation – female contraceptives, male contraceptives, female hormone pills, male hormone pills, those two pills required by law for those not looking to have a child. Have requirements worldwide that only one child can be born, and once the woman has that one child, close off the pipes, same operation.

We don’t really need to kill anyone in order to do it, though the wind-down period of a world-wide population-reduction effort would span at least a century, if not more. However, it’s this sort of thing why the UN exists, so we can develop international laws for a world that will not be quite as dangerous for all of us.

We need birth rates to drop dramatically, in all regions of the world. For those areas that need more than one kid in a family to survive, we help them eliminate the need for 5-9 children families, through senior citizen programs and better medical care for people in those regions.

Give tax incentives to those who have no children. Cut tax credits for children. Make it so every couple can only have one child, and encourage others to not have children at all. Figure out what population we can realistically sustain as a planet, and aim for that.

And sign an international treaty that puts extreme consequences on any nation that decides it wants to go an easy route and simply kill its people.

It can be done in a conscientious manner, without murder. It should be part of the equation, no matter how unpopular it would be.

That being said, I doubt it will happen. As you said, popular opinion would decide this.

What is your evidence for this Jeff @ 58? Because he/she has a better understanding of the English language than most of us? Or he/she agreed with your opinion? Neither answer is based on science.

This forum is not science- it is discourse and conversation. I don’t need to produce evidence to frame an opinion, or meet some some form of quasi courtroom rules of admissibility to produce it to your satisfaction.

On the other ‘bait’ you’ve thrown out there- I will say that there were a few things that I disagreed with, namely that there probably are “honest” findings out there re: APG-caused warming vs environmental.

However I, (who you incorrectly blast with your ad-hominem gun as ‘conservative’) found the prevailing thesis of Val’s statement- That dismissing skepticism and by extension differing opinions; which seems par for the course thus far; borders on fanaticism. The irony being that all of us should know better.

I thusly declared Val’s comment to be the best answer to the conclusion, and prevailing comments of this post (basically to ignore “deniers” by saying lalalalalala) See the cute otter picture above.

I say this because IMHO most of the posters in this thread have demonstrated very little talent to differentiate “deniers” from “skeptics”, in that they have have produced shamelessly fallacious arguments and absurd statements- and in that case I believe one should undertake the more rigorous approach – namely sticking to the process and meeting “deniers” -and- skeptics with reason instead of ridicule, or risk becoming exactly that which any reasonable person abhors.

Also, Messier, one solution to the “there’s just too many people” truth (and it is a truth), is worldwide support for birth control implementation – female contraceptives, male contraceptives, female hormone pills, male hormone pills, those two pills required by law for those not looking to have a child. Have requirements worldwide that only one child can be born, and once the woman has that one child, close off the pipes, same operation.

Like communism it sounds good in theory but the reality is it won’t work or be enforceable.

We don’t really need to kill anyone in order to do it, though the wind-down period of a world-wide population-reduction effort would span at least a century, if not more.

Okay firstly if we’re as close to the “tipping point” as the CAGW-ists say then we don’t have a century.

Secondly, we don’t need to kill anyone – really? Think the Pope and the Muslims and a whole lot of other fundamentalist religions and people would allow this to happen? A lot of people would (perhaps illogically but emotionally and fanatically) fight this sort of idea ever being implemented. To the death.

However, it’s this sort of thing why the UN exists, so we can develop international laws for a world that will not be quite as dangerous for all of us.

Thirdly, the UN? It is useless.

It can’t get anything effective done and is really a bit of a joke.

Exhibit A : Rwanda & the genocide there in the 1990’s,

Exhibit B : The war in wahat was Yugoslavia & the Srebrenitza (spelling?) massacre in the UN declared safe haven.

Exhibit C : The war in Iraq that happened in spite of the UN efforts – also the wars in Darfur, Georgia, the former Yugoslavia, Africa, Latin America, etc cetera.

The United Nations was created to stop wars post WWII once and for all. Hasn’t that worked well – not!

Frankly, the UN is a pointless sideshow and we’d be best off scrapping it altogether and starting again.

We need birth rates to drop dramatically, in all regions of the world.

Yes we do, but it ain’t going to happen anytime soon.

For those areas that need more than one kid in a family to survive, we help them eliminate the need for 5-9 children families, through senior citizen programs and better medical care for people in those regions.
Give tax incentives to those who have no children.

The cost of that coming from who and where? Who pays and how is it arranged and enforced? Where do you get the peopel and infrastructure necessary?

Cut tax credits for children. Make it so every couple can only have one child, and encourage others to not have children at all. Figure out what population we can realistically sustain as a planet, and aim for that. And sign an international treaty that puts extreme consequences on any nation that decides it wants to go an easy route and simply kill its people.

And if that dissenting nation (Likely more than one) has nuclear wepoans and chooses to resist violently?

It can be done in a conscientious manner, without murder.

Only in theory I fear. In practice, I doubt this very much.

It should be part of the equation, no matter how unpopular it would be.
That being said, I doubt it will happen. As you said, popular opinion would decide this.

Yes – just like popular opinion is deciding now that the climatologists are wrong even through the general public expertise in claimtology is on avergae near-zero. It won’t happen. There are a lot of utopian ideas that would work very well on paper but are absurd to consider imposing in practice. Marxism is one such idea, full Libertarianism at the other extreme is probably another. Your suggestions here are a third example.

The Real World is much more messy,contrary, complicated and harder to work than the ideal theoretical one.

I would agree however that there are some things we can do like empower woermn and give them mor econtrolover their reproductive functions and encourage the spread of modern feminism into some very nastily repressive patriachial cultures eg. the Catholic and Muslim worlds. Doing so will be hard work, costly and slow but may eventually help somewhat. It won’t be much and it won’t be quick.

Thinking about the whole global warming situation doesn’t dominate my life & I do a lot of other things and think about heaps of other things.

Thinking about CAGW & suchlike issues is a depressing excercise as is thinking about worst case future scenarios and assessing their likelihood or otherwise. On the good side it makes for some nice SF or horror stories.

The mobile phone that fits in the front shirt pocket of the guy next to you was once the size of a shoe box and before that was attached to a wall. Today you can use it to communicate and perform commerce on the Internet. The farmer’s fields you see on the side of the road yield many more times the food stocks then in the time of your grandfather. [SNIP!] Life and the world in general is getting so much better. Look at what science and technology has done to bring prosperity to what was once despair in so many regions of the world.

Yes, very true. Technology has made our lives fantastically better & I’d say it is our main hope here.

Perhaps we’ll get that cheap easy nuclear fusion power we’re constantly told is only twenty years away – and has been for the last fifty years or more. Perhaps we’ll get powersats beaming down microwaves collected from space or something. That could change the situation completely and I certainly *HOPE* it does.

I just wouldn’t count on it for sure.

I wish we could but then I wish the predictions for the year 2000 had turned out like Arthur C. Clarke & Kubrick had imagined them in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. I would never have believed when I was a small kid that we wouldn’t have landed on Mars and have a permanent lunar colony by now. That Concorde and the Sapce shuttle would look like such dead ends and wouldn’t have been replaced by even more spectacular futuristic craft making space accessible to more people.

Technology is remarkable and our last best hope.

But we can’t rely on it and just assume it’ll pop up like a rabbit from a hat.

Messier Tidy Upper you need to get out more and take a look at all the great things that are being done today for people that five, ten or 20 years ago would have no hope of survival. Wake up!

Sorry what was that? I nodded off for a second there! 😉

Seriously, I *do* try to get out and I do see a lot of beauty and joy in life too. Just not much when it comes to thinking about this gloomy CAGW issue and its implications for the future.

Okay firstly if we’re as close to the “tipping point” as the CAGW-ists say then we don’t have a century.

There is no consensus that there even is a tipping point, not to mention that we are near it. Some research indicates there might be, other research indicates there probably isn’t, no one is really certain.

@ Jeff: Alright then, answer the question I posed to Paul (remember some of it is referencing past conversations with Paul that probably don’t apply to you):

what would convince you that global warming is real [and humans are the largest cause in this instance]? Note that it should be a standard that, if applied across all of science, will not result in rejecting most of science. For instance the standard creationist demand for a “smoking gun” that you used before, if applied consistently, would result in tossing out the vast majority of science, including science required for building the computers we are using right now.

So I am telling you now: if you demand a standard of evidence that few areas of science could meet, including areas of science you depend on every day, then that shows that you are anti-science, completely closed-minded, and a hypocrite. So think hard about whether what you ask for, if you even bother to reply, is actually reasonable in light of the standards used by other areas of science you accept.

@Messier – By and large, I agree with most of what you’re saying, and sadly it will be politics and not science that determines how we deal with this issue. And sadly no one is going to be willing to give up their silver spoons and cushions [Actually its a *heck* of a lot more than just “silver spoons & cushions” we’re being asked to sacrifice – its our whole way of living, our economies and us having hopeful outlooks for our children’s futures. – MTU] to make things better (this is, of course, more than just global warming). However, I have one question.

What do we define as catastrophic?

Good question.

There have been some pretty extreme scenarios raised by the CAGW folks – oceans turning to acid, massive sea level rises swamping large parts of some coasts and many densely populated cities, lots of hyper-super-mega-extreme weather and so forth. There’s lot that could be described as “catastrophic” depending on where you draw the line.

It is true that Catastrophic is a subjective word and a matter of opinion.

What is catastrophic for Pacific islands might be great news for Canada and Siberia.

Climate change that wrecks havoc on Florida may be welcomed as great news for Minnesota.

So I do think some of the CAGW group are overlooking and underestimating the positive aspects of global warming. There will likely be regional winners and losers with the winners hopefully outnumbering and outweighing the losers.

Many of the probable losers esp. the tropics and sub-tropics which is a zone of mainly Third World hell-holes full of misery, war and tinpot banana republics are already suffering from all sorts of calamities today. Not sure whether that means you can say they’re used to it and it won’t be anything new or whether it is just really unjust that the places worst off now are those destined to get ever worser.

I don’t think all the world’s going to end, or we’re going to wipe out humanity, or even that we’ll wipe out human civilization, but I do think we’re going to get lots of people killed as a result of this, and I do think we’re going to have some extremely painful times as a result of climate change. Not catastrophic, mind you, just that this period of nice growth we’re seeing, isn’t going to be so nice. …[SNIP!] ..But I don’t consider that catastrophic.

Maybe. That’s quite likely. Hard to say. It could be like that or things could be much worse than that.

I agree we won’t destroy the planet or turn Earth into another Venus but I *do* think the future of our civilisation could be in jeopardy here.

@201. TheBlackCat Says:

@ Messier Tidy Upper: There is one serious flaw that negates your entire argument. The problem is that fossil fuels are a finite resource. We are going to run out, so we are going to need to find replacements. So it is not a question of whether society will lose its dependency on fossil fuels, it is a question of when and how.

For oil maybe – but not for coal for which we still have immense supplies.

“Peak oil” is a separate – & also very gloomy and depressing topic – if a somewhat related issue to CAGW. I don’t think it negates my argument when it comes to CAGW or climate change. More’s the pity.

I’ll also add we do have other reserves of oil that will be tapped when we are desperate enough to render null and void the current politically correct feel-good ecological idealism which may well happen sooner rather than later.

Almost certainly one day in the not-all-that-distant future, Alaska will be drilled for oil as will the reserves under Antartica. National parks and reserves will be opened for mining and especially for any oil they harbour.
Brutal economic reality – our sheer need for oil to have our prosperity and our basic economy and Western lifestyles – will soon outweigh the environmental cute & fuzzy principles. This is one of those things that, realistically, just falls into the ‘Sad but true” category about human nature.

If we can afford the luxury of environmentalism and not using reserves of oil in pristine wilderness areas we’ll do so. But *when* we need to mine these areas to keep our Western civilisation, our jobs, our economy, our way of life going – then we’ll throw the unaffordable environmentalism aside and suck out and burn up every last drop of oil.

Unless we get a real alternative in the meantime that is better – cheaper more efficent and reliable beforehand. Don’t hold your breath for that. Although we should be desperately working on alternative possibilities incl. nuclear ones and also on ways to synthesise artifical “oil” that’s as good as the stuff we prise (& prize) from below the the ground.

That centered largely on the fact that McIntyre used a “trick” to generate a hockey-stick-shaped leading principal component from random (red) noise. “Trick” of course, is used in the mathematical sense here…

So the next question is, how does one distinguish a “noise” hockey-stick from a hockey-stick generated from data that contains a genuine “hockey stick” signal?

That’s easy: you look at the eigenvalue spectrum. And it turns out that McIntyre’s “noise only” eigenvalue spectra were much flatter than Mann’s hockey-stick eigenvalue spectrum.

For example, the centered-PCA method applied to McIntyre’s red noise generated leading eigenvalues with a median magnitude of about 0.04. In contrast, the centered-PCA method applied to Mann’s data produced a leading eigenvalue of about 0.2, about 5 times larger than McIntyre’s leading eigenvalues.

For the non-centered PCA method, this still held. Mann’s leading eigenvalue was several times larger than McIntyre’s “red noise” leading eigenvalues for the non-centered PCA case as well. If you look at the eigenvalues produced by the 70 NoAmer tree-ring sets in Mann’s data, you will see that the eigenvalue spectrum is dominated by a very small number of eigenvalues. That tells you right off the bat that there’s a very good chance that there’s a common signal in those tree-rings. On the other hand, if you have an extremely small leading eigenvalue (with the remaining eigenvalues trailing off more slowly) then you will know that there’s not much of a common signal in your data, as is the case if you generate “hockey-sticks” from red noise.

It’s pretty easy to generate red noise time-series and compute the principal-components/eigenvalues with a freeware package like SciLab. If you do so, you will find that you can generate “hockey-stick” principal components, but you will also discover that the associated eigenvalue spectra are much flatter than Mann’s “hockey-stick” eigenvalue spectrum.

If the eigenvalues produced by Mann’s tree-ring data looked anything like McIntyre’s eigenvalues, Mann certainly would have said to himself, “The eigenvalues are telling me that there’s not much of a common temperature signal in this tree-ring data; I probably won’t be able to perform a very good temperature reconstruction with them”. Mann almost certainly would not have tried to publish a temperature reconstruction with that set of tree-ring data.

McIntyre was making a mountain out of a molehill; any competent analyst would have looked at the eigenvalue spectrum produced by the PCA step before proceeding to the next step in the analysis. If the eigenvalues looked anything like McIntyre’s, the analyst would almost certainly have said to him/herself, “this doesn’t look too promising…”.

Thinking about the whole global warming situation doesn’t dominate my life & I do a lot of other things and think about heaps of other things.
____________________

“But other times its great! 😉 ”

I would think so. With your head screwed on in a sensible manner I would think life for you is rather pleasant.

In correspondence I have jokingly cursed Phil that he puts up these darn global warming threads just to rile up the few of us who remain on the planet that actually give a crap about the situation. (Phil I think you must sit back and laugh loud when you screw us by putting these threads up!!!)

It seems you are with me in dismissing the “C” in CAGW(Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) and I am a bit further down the hill than you with regards to Anthropogenic Global Warming with my stress on “Global”. I do have concerns regarding “Black Carbon”, particulates and land use effects on regional climate and to some extent the Global Climate.

Alternative energy is something I have dreamed about since I was a child. I am all for it. One day it will be realistic. In the mean time I have no problem with left-coast fruitcakes stapling pinwheels to their foreheads, disconnecting from the electric grid and promising never to purchase another iPhone, Laptop or vacation plan that includes renting a polar bear suit at one of (blackcat’s) CAGW circuses that go into production multiple times each year in some of the most exotic places in the world.

In today’s absence of any evidence whatsoever of a Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming problem I am of the mind that if it ain’t broke don’t screw up everyone else in the world and their Aunt Tilly! However: even as much as I believe that everything the government touches turns to crap, I would love to see, and would vote for and be happy to pay additional (US) taxes for a “Manhattan Project” for energy(Gen 4 nuclear/Solar/Wind/Wave).

We can’t selectively choose the successes and failures of the U.N.. Yes, it has failed in some areas, but it has been a resounding success in others.

The CAGWists who say we’re right at the brink now are probably wrong in that we’ve probably already passed the point where there are irreversible changes due to our activities already in place. Whether those changes will be catastrophic, though, is up for great debate. Again, I don’t think we’re going to wipe out the human species, or destroy this planet’s ability to keep life, but it will get a bit more difficult than what we have now. At this point we have to begin looking at the super-long-term.

Besides, these issues are more than just climate change, we simply can’t sustain a 7 Billion worldwide population on the resources our planet provides. That society isn’t possible, not in the long-term.

And I never said there wouldn’t be people who disagree with it, I also never said we need to implement it globally immediately. You’d need major education campaigns and diplomatic efforts. However, I’m confident that India and China, themselves accounting for a large portion of the world population, would jump on board for enforcement of birth control measures almost immediately. China’s already part of the way there.

The cost of that coming from who and where? Who pays and how is it arranged and enforced? Where do you get the peopel and infrastructure necessary?

– Developed world pays for it in the third world, obviously. We need to toss away this idea that the world is a bunch of independent little states that have no bearing on what the other does – everything one country does effects another country. We need to start acting like it. And yes, it won’t happen immediately, but if we make no efforts to make it happen, then it will never happen, and we might as well blow ourselves up now before we drain our resources enough to where we’ll end up killing each other off anyway.

That sort of effort takes place at the individual level first.

As for no-child tax credits – use a system similar to the child tax credits we have now. That bit isn’t very difficult.

If a dissenting nation chooses to kill off its citizens, then we engage them. We will not force people to sign onto such a treaty, but if they choose to make their own solution of eradicating their own people, then the rest of the treaty signatories would stop them.

That solution is much more sensible than the “the only solution may be to take out India and China” one that you mulled over earlier.

Vaccines are required in most developed countries, it is unrealistic to require birth control for all citizens, and unrealistic to spay/neuter those who have just had a child in a hospital? How do you figure? We succeed in vaccinating most of the population in most developed countries, it could become a part of the medical requirements of citizens. They exist already.

And yes, things will be costly, and slow. What I propose here would also be costly and slow. How would we spread modern feminism to other countries that don’t have it? It runs into the same roadblocks as my suggestions.

And yes, ultimately it will be public opinion, which is largely why I don’t think anything like what I’ve suggested will happen. I do think it’s possible, but it would be very difficult, and take a very long time to implement, and even longer to get results flowing in. However “it sounds good in theory, but won’t work in real life” is not a good argument. It never was. Marxism sounds good in theory and doesn’t work precisely in real life. I maintain that capitalism is the same sort of story. Nothing works as good in real life as it does in theory.

Thanks for the response on the catastrophic question. Again, I agree with you! It is mostly a buzz-word here. Things will change, some people will be better off, others will be worse off. Though there is evidence that the oceans are becoming more acidic, but how far that will go is anyone’s guess. I’m more concerned with the health of the biosphere than I am with the survivability of humanity. Humanity is big enough to adapt to changing conditions. We’ve done it before (and with a lot less technology), but if the biosphere changes too quickly then we may be in for some pain. Plus I think the biosphere will provide us with much-needed medical advances and ideas, to destroy it would be short-sighted.

Also on the subject of oil, the only reason we’re still using it is because the prices are being kept artificially low through subsidies of oil companies, and even coal companies. Those are keeping us from really getting innovative when it comes to new forms of energy development.

216. Paul in Sweden Says: “In correspondence I have jokingly cursed Phil that he puts up these darn global warming threads just to rile up the few of us who remain on the planet that actually give a crap about the situation. (Phil I think you must sit back and laugh loud when you screw us by putting these threads up!!!)”

Actually, I think it’s the equivalent of “sweeps” in the TV industry, that his “Hive Overmind” masters are constantly measuring the success of his blog by the number of postings he gets. When the numbers fall off a little, he posts an AGW piece and BANG! he’s back in the top 10%!

Look at all of you losers wasting your lives trying to convince the unconvincable. I bet you’ve all spent the equivalent of days or weeks writing comments and rebuttals here – for what? There isn’t any good will in these exchanges, no respect for even the people holding opposing views, let alone the view itself. Nobody is changing their minds – I don’t think a single person would claim that they have been convinced of the opposing viewpoint in all the years that this blog has run articles on this subject. So why waste your life?

As scientists and those who value it, we know we don’t have all of the answers but we have a pretty damn good method to get at them. Stop wasting your breath endlessly taking the bait of those who convinced themselves of their own truths long ago, and try to explain the state of the research to those who aren’t so thick-headed and bored.

I dont deny that the planet is warming up. I believe it has been warming up since the last ice age. I dont believe that any man made carbon footprint had anything to do with the original warming trend. As a person with common sense, I think that vegetation thrives on C02. I also believe that vegetation gives off O2. I would much rather see some warmer weather rather than another ice age with glaciers crowding into Up State New York. The true reason for all the hoopla is that somebody is making a bundle of money on exciting the folks about their waterfront property going to be worthless in a few short years so lets all flee to the hills. It is about control and how much money they can get from you as a tax that keeps this nonsense alive. Get real people and deal with it as it happens. You are not going to stop Mother Nature. She has a mind of her own. If you try, you will only be paying your hard earned wages to folks that don’t deserve it and will quietly call you all suckers as the money is removed from your pockets and placed into theirs.

The reason people feel compelled to debate these things is because we think it matters. Talking to those who already agree isn’t going to do anything. Maybe those who disagree appear thick-headed, or convinced of their own truths, but who in the world are we to judge that? You talk about it to people, and maybe they will change their mind.

It really doesn’t matter that the sun isn’t subjected to constant input to produce heat. The Earth IS subjected to constant input, of course. Heat. From the sun.

When the heat going into a system is greater than the heat radiated away, heating occurs.

How does upper tropospheric CO2 with less mass, less heat capacitance at a cooler temperature heat the denser oceans or the much denser land mass????

It’s subjected to constant input. Heat. From the sun.

What is this obsession with mass? How can a mirror, being much less massive than the sun, reflect the sun’s rays?”

Dave… mirrors, smoke and mirrors those are all too common with the CAGW religious cult and frankly not taken seriously by the majority of the people on this planet.

Are you now saying that CO2 acts like a mirror in the earth’s atmosphere?

We know that CO2 and other GHGs in computer games(GCM General Circulation Models) provide a capacitance for heat. However Dave and the rest of you cultists out there, where is this heat? Dave’s CO2 mirror is laughable.

At present day with more than 30 years of satellite data(and even longer with regards to radiosonode data) there is no evidence of any tropospheric heat capacitance in the earth’s atmosphere that can be measured much less effect the much warmer and denser oceans and land masses.

Where is this stealth heat sink in the 2nd law of thermodynamics Dave?

I cannot seem to recall it?

Where is this CO2 CAGW?

How come nobody can find it? It is a travesty! …and I can repeat the climategate emails that indicate that your bishops in your church of global warming are also astounded.

Please help me to understand your stealth thermodynamics as it occurs on your home world with relation to earth before the comet comes to pick you up.

And yes, ultimately it will be public opinion, which is largely why I don’t think anything like what I’ve suggested will happen. I do think it’s possible, but it would be very difficult, and take a very long time to implement, and even longer to get results flowing in. However “it sounds good in theory, but won’t work in real life” is not a good argument. It never was. Marxism sounds good in theory and doesn’t work precisely in real life. I maintain that capitalism is the same sort of story. Nothing works as good in real life as it does in theory.”

Angus, two hundred and something posts and now I feel I have some common ground with you.

Utopia is a distant dream but I hope it is not as far off as it seems.

There is nothing that would make me happier than for clean energy to be available for every single person on the planet. One day this may happen, I believed it in the ’70s and like you(perhaps) I believe it can happen in my lifetime.

Forcing people to do stupid things today before clean sustainable energy is ready for prime time is er…STUPID!

NO, I do not believe in the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming doomsday scenarios. However, without that even being a consideration… if I should see that Gen IV Nuclear/Wind/Photovoltaic/Wave power is viable I might even be convinced to put a tin foil hat on and march with you and your friends wearing a polar bear suit or hanging a sandwich board across my chest.

“Jimmyboy, ‘Climate Science’ as worshiped today bears little resemblance to actual science. I do however understand the parties and grants are much more lucrative though.

If there is no evidence, no records, no calculations that can be duplicated it is not science.”

You obviously aren’t a climate scientist to be spouting such worthless prattle, Swedish Paul.
You’re an ignoramus. Got that?
So do yourself a favour and go talk to a real climate scientist and dispel your delusions.

“Look at all of you losers wasting your lives trying to convince the unconvincable. I bet you’ve all spent the equivalent of days or weeks writing comments and rebuttals here – for what? There isn’t any good will in these exchanges, no respect for even the people holding opposing views, let alone the view itself. Nobody is changing their minds – I don’t think a single person would claim that they have been convinced of the opposing viewpoint in all the years that this blog has run articles on this subject. So why waste your life?”

Astrofiend you come across as a concern troll. Some of us enjoy shooting down denier distortion and lies and some like reading such put downs. So why deny us such fun? Along the way some of us get an insight into how science works and why scientists insist that AGW is real. We also get to see the desperate attempts by deniers to smear the scientists and their work, and the rebuttals of such attempts by those who give a damn about science. And that is very definately not a waste of time.
I see that Lonny Eachus has shut up since post #184. Another one ( denier distortion ) bites the dust, or has Lonny and Maurizio finally met in person and they’re on honeymoon in sunny Rio?

“Jimmyboy, ‘Climate Science’ as worshiped today bears little resemblance to actual science. I do however understand the parties and grants are much more lucrative though.

If there is no evidence, no records, no calculations that can be duplicated it is not science.”

You obviously aren’t a climate scientist to be spouting such worthless prattle, Swedish Paul.
You’re an ignoramus. Got that?
So do yourself a favour and go talk to a real climate scientist and dispel your delusions.”

Yes, Jimmyboy wrap yourself in your blanket of ‘consensus’.

Know that the world has had the religious epiphany that you have experienced when you felt the calling of your faith. Know that the whole world signed on board with the Kyoto Protocol which by the mathematics of your own bishops and cardinals in the faith of Catastrophic Global Warming(CAGW) would not have had any measurable effect even in the computer models – which have no relationship with real world observation – data and evidence is a b%tch.

Spend the next 20 or 30 years with your Polar Bear suit and sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world is near. Heck, just for giggles and laughs ask the freak next to you if he even knows which demonstration or protest he is attending. Chances are he doesn’t know. Another protest, a few days of cutting classes, it really doesn’t matter.

In the end….

Just remember the laughter that you hear is not that of people laughing with you but the resounding sound of people laughing at you.

“Spend the next 20 or 30 years with your Polar Bear suit and sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world is near. Heck, just for giggles and laughs ask the freak next to you if he even knows which demonstration or protest he is attending. Chances are he doesn’t know. Another protest, a few days of cutting classes, it really doesn’t matter yadda yadda yadda”

Rant on if you want. It won’t change the fact that you know nothing about how science functions, or you wouldn’t be calling it a religion or saying that climate scientists are in it for the cash. You’re the fool blinded by faith, denying physics and reality. There is no god but Denial, and Plimer is its prophet for you.
Just remember the laughter that you hear is the laughter of rational people at your ignorance of science.

Dave… mirrors, smoke and mirrors those are all too common with the CAGW religious cult and frankly not taken seriously by the majority of the people on this planet.

Yes, it is, serious doubt about AGW is mostly restricted to the U.S. Outside the U.S. the debate is mostly on the extent and repercussions of AGW

Are you now saying that CO2 acts like a mirror in the earth’s atmosphere?

Wait, what? He was simply criticizing your obsession with mass. He didn’t say anything even remotely similar to this.

We know that CO2 and other GHGs in computer games(GCM General Circulation Models) provide a capacitance for heat. However Dave and the rest of you cultists out there, where is this heat? Dave’s CO2 mirror is laughable.

No, we know about CO2 because of basic physics. I can’t believe you are actually rejecting CO2 as being a greenhouse gas. That involves rejecting basically all of physics from the last century or so. This is basic, basic physics that has been established for a long time now. Thanks for proving once and for all that you are totally anti-science.

And your question has already been answered: the heat comes from the sun (in the form of electromagnetic radiation), the CO2 simply prevents some of it from escaping back into space (by absorbing it and re-radiating a portion of that back towards the Earth). Once again, this is basic physics you are rejecting, not AGW.

In fact we have directly observed changes in the amount of energy escaping in to space exactly in the region where CO2 should absorb it.

At present day with more than 30 years of satellite data(and even longer with regards to radiosonode data) there is no evidence of any tropospheric heat capacitance in the earth’s atmosphere that can be measured much less effect the much warmer and denser oceans and land masses.

Uh, what? Of course the troposphere has heat capacity (not capacitance, that is an electrical engineering term), anything with mass does. And much of the energy that is re-radiated by the CO2 is absorbed by the land and oceans, heating those directly. Also, if you have two materials in physical contact with different heat contents, the heat will flow from one to the other. This, once again, is basic, basic physics, knows for centuries, and you would know it too if your understanding of science was at least at a middle-school level. So even if it was absorbed only by the atmosphere, which it isn’t, then that would still lead to an energy imbalance that would cause energy to be transferred to the land and oceans.

The oceans can store a lot of energy, and also due to their absoroption spectrum they absorb a lot of the energy both from direct sunlight and from re-emitted energy from GHGs. That is why people are looking very closely at exactly how much energy it can store and the details of its storage, movement, and release of energy.

Now, are you going to answer my question from two days ago (post 199) or can I assume you have no interest whatsoever in any reasonable discussion on the subject and just care about pushing an agenda?

Are you now saying that CO2 acts like a mirror in the earth’s atmosphere?

I was demonstrating that the redirection of electromagnetic radiation does not require that the atmosphere be more massive than the sun!

Photons are massless. No mass. Each interaction with a photon causes whatever the photon hits to gain mass, but not the mass of the sun, since most of the sun stays where it is. A VERY SMALL amount of mass. Effectively, we can ignore mass in these calculations.

So, presuming that relative to the Earth the gas that makes up the atmosphere is not moving at close to the speed of light, it does not matter how heavy the atmosphere is.

where is this heat?

It’s coming from the sun. Which only gets switched off at night.

Where is this stealth heat sink in the 2nd law of thermodynamics Dave?

Where is a recipe for custard in the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

Please help me to understand your stealth thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics applies to the ENTIRE system. Stated in the old-fashioned terms of heat flow, the NET flow of heat will be from hotter to colder. The sun is the hotter. Space, outside the atmosphere, is the colder. If the sun stopped shining, the Earth would rapidly approach thermal equilibrium with space.

Some radiation escaping the Earth is absorbed by greenhouse gases. Some of that is re-emitted back to the planet. This is in accordance with basic incontrovertible physics. If you can explain more exactly how you think the greenhouse gas model violates what you think the 2nd law of thermodynamics is, I will explain how you are wrong.

Do you think scientists are sufficiently absent-minded to sometimes come up with stuff that violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics? They just forget it and no-one notices until you remind everyone about it in comments on a blog?

And you did exactly what I expected you to do, Cyrus. Attack the people instead of their evidence. I am indeed laughing, because you are so predictable. Further, I didn’t ask about Eschenbach’s opinion, I specifically mentioned Prof. Karlen. Come back when you can argue about the issues and not the people who are presenting them. I do not accept ad hominem arguments.

@115 Angus Martin:

Angus, I am sorry your eyesight has gotten so poor. The link to the article is here on this page, right where it was when I first put it there. It hasn’t moved any.

@121 Zeke:

In fact I rather did enjoy that, Zeke. In fact I think I am going to write a blog post of my own about your article. It is such a fine example of how much time one can waste (your own and that of others) indulging in such an elaborate construction of straw-man arguments.

What is really amusing to me is that even after all that effort to “refute” Prof. Karlen, nearly every significant point that he and Eschenbach actually raised have seemed to have gone completely over your head. You got one of them wrong, and didn’t even mention the others. So I guess I will have to explain them to you.

First off, you did not even refute Prof. Karlen’s initial point, which is that the NORDLIM data do not show the temperature increases reported by the papers that were the basis for the IPCC report. In fact your article does not mention the NORDKLIM data at all… and yet that is what the email exchange was originally about. How can you claim to have refuted something if you didn’t even mention it?

And why did you use NOAA data in an attempt to reconstruct a graph, when the mentioned NORDKLIM data is available online, and there’s even a link to it in the article? It sure seems like you went far out of your way to reproduce a graph using DIFFERENT data, when the data that was actually being discussed is only a few seconds away on the Internet. (It is. I checked.) That really puzzles me. Why in the world would you do that? The fact is that since your graph doesn’t use the data that was under discussion, you haven’t actually refuted anything. You MIGHT HAVE shown some evidence that the main of Northern Europe actually has seen a temperature rise. But that is completely irrelevant to the discussion… as will be shown momentarily. Wait for it, I will get there.

Second, you mention that the rudimentary graph in the figure shown does not represent Nordic temperatures, but rather Northern Europe, and laughably imply that Karlen had simply mistaken one for the other. Don’t be ridiculous. Far from it… he mentions issues related to Northern and Central Europe himself. It was ESCHENBACH who brought up the Northern Europe graph in the illustration, not Karlen. (Karlen did ask about data supporting the graphs, but the specific graphs are not that important. For example, in the Nature article he references at the same time, there is only one graph representing the whole of Europe. It is quite clear that Karlen is looking for the supporting data, and that the specific graphs are not very relevant to his inquiry. YOU pointed out yourself that the graph had been shifted to avoid overlap, and that the map projection distorts the shape of the land mass. So you are arguing against yourself. The specific graph COULD NOT be terribly important to the issue… it is obviously just an approximation for a region. It was the DATA that Karlen was seeking that was the central issue.)

And I concede that Eschenbach may have been in error there, in concentrating on the NEU graph. But it does not matter very much. More on that in a moment. And I am going to completely leave out Eschenbach’s reconstructed curve, as not being very important, even though you attempted to reconstruct it yourself. (And failed, by the way: the curve Eschenbach created was for NORDIC COUNTRIES, using data from NORDKLIM. The graph YOU created was for Northern Europe, using completely different data from GHCN. Now, it is true that Eschenbach then turned around and compared that graph to Norther Europe: a mistake. But it was his mistake, not Karlen’s. But then YOU turned around and constructed a graph for Northern Europe… which was in fact a different region, and used different data, from what Eschenbach produced. So you CAN’T logically compare them! Once again: you can’t refute something when you’re not even talking about the same things! You can’t refute a graph of specifically Nordic country data with a graph representing all of Northern Europe! Doing so, you make the same mistake Eschenbach did!)

But what gets me is that you honestly believed that Karlen could be that stupid? Frankly I am amazed that you could have made so elementary an error yourself (i.e., implying that Karlen specifically mistook the Nordic countries for all of Northern Europe, when the actual contents of the article do not support that idea). But if it was not an error, then were you deliberately trying to mis-characterize what Karlen was trying to say? Your implication IS demonstrably incorrect, so logic would seem to dictate that it has to be one or the other.

And then you have the audacity to write “It seems that Willis … might have been a tad premature in his criticism.” When in fact you don’t know that at all. Again, the data you show is for Northern Europe, and you are comparing it to data that was referred to in the original article as specifically the Fennoscandian region. You are comparing apples and oranges. It is yet another straw-man argument, or an extension of the same one. Either way, it’s invalid. But I think it’s really funny that you are committing exactly the error of which you accuse Karlen. (And which, if you read the article a bit more carefully, you will see that he did not actually commit. You did, though.)

Now, back to actual Europe. It is possible that the graph you reconstructed is a rough approximation of real temperature increases. But you neglected to mention another of Karlen’s main points: that urban heat islands are an issue. Most of Northern Europe (nearly all outside of the Nordic countries, Latvia, and Belarus) is highly urbanized. (Look at any population density map. Here is one example.) Karlen specifically brings up the issue of heat islands, and suggested (as many climate scientists have) that temperature increases in large portions of Europe are simply due to the heat island effect, because so much of it is urbanized. Karlen specifically mentions Central Europe, but most of Northern Europe (again, outside the Nordic countries) is similarly urbanized.

So even if your graph is correct for the “Northern Europe” region in general, there is strong evidence that such warming is due AT LEAST in part to heat island effect. Karlen is not alone in this assertion; as I say it has been proposed by many climate scientists. The heat island effect is well-known and accepted, and is acknowledged even by Mann, Jones, and the whole CRU crew. In point of fact, much of Europe is KNOWN to be anomalous for that reason. So I have to wonder, Zeke: why did you not even bring up the subject of heat island effect? Could it be because that would render the temperature increase you show in your Northern Europe graph completely meaningless, in the context of AGW? Sure it could! The only other explanation I can think of offhand is that you just didn’t understand that little point.

But wait! There’s more! And more that you so conveniently neglected to account for in your “refutation”.

Another thing that Eschenbach points out — though the issue was raised indirectly by Karlen — is whether heat island data was included in the data that was used to generate the graphs and show that there is AGW. Trenberth states that heat islands were removed from the data, which they would have to be in order to obtain valid results; as mentioned before, large parts of Europe are known to be anomalous for just that reason. Further, Chapter 3 of the IPCC report states that heat islands are compensated for by (1) “excluding as many of the affected sites as possible” and (2) by widening the error bands. However, as it turns out, many if not most of the largest heat islands were in fact left IN the data, contrary to the claims of both Trenberth and the IPCC. (In addition to NORDKLIM, I have a copy of that data, too, designated HadCRUT3.) Just that fact in itself is enough to render their results invalid. It doesn’t prove that their thesis is wrong, but it effectively invalidates the evidence they were attempting to use to show the existence of AGW.

And while Trenberth attempts to explain other discrepancies in the temperature data as being due to sea surface temperature, according to the references in the actual report the results being shown were created using land data only. So THAT can’t be the answer.

I could go on but I am about out of time so I will wrap this up with a short summary. What it basically boils down to is this:

(1) In your “refutation” of the article When Results Go Bad, your main assertion is that Professor Karlen mistook data for Northern Europe to be data for the Scandinavian region. This assertion is ridiculous and is not supported by the actual article. It is true that Eschenbach might have made some logical errors by comparing data for the region actually in his annual anomaly graph against the other region, but Karlen did not make that mistake. Further, you commit exactly the same error. Karlen specifically referred to data for the Fennoscandian region, you used data for Northern Europe.

You completely missed, or at least neglected, the following points and I am a bit curious as to why:

(2) In addition to mixing the regions, you used completely different data than Professor Karlen was referring to, which is a puzzle because that data was readily available to you. Between the two, that renders your annual anomaly graph exactly as pointless as the one Eschenbach constructed.

(3) Even if your data (and the data from HadCRUT3) are 100% correct for Northern Europe, it includes heat island data which renders it unsuitable for demonstrating the existence of AGW. And to repeat: Karlen’s main points were NOT about Northern Europe anyway. If you read the article carefully you can see that clearly.

(4) Either Kevin Trenberth was lying (I am not accusing him), or he really DID NOT KNOW what data was actually used in the reports. Which is pretty strange, because he helped to create them. And if he did not know, what was he doing trying to answer Prof. Karlen’s questions?

(5) Specious attempts were made to try to explain discrepancies by saying that they were affected by sea surface temperature, when the report states that it uses land data only.

So even if we assume no wrongdoing, what we have here is exactly the kind of situation that Mann, Jones, Trenberth, and the rest of CRU were accused of in the first place: disorganization; invalid assumptions about what they are doing, and what data they are doing it with; use of data in invalid or inappropriate ways, to the extent of actually rendering their conclusions invalid; general incompetence and irresponsibility. And the IPCC report in question includes invalid data.

Apologies, this particular sentence escaped me at first, my eye skipped down to the links you had posted: “We’re still laughing at your basic lack of knowledge when it comes to CO 2.”

I find that to be a very interesting statement, Cyrus. Oops, just a moment while I try to stop laughing about your having done just exactly what I predicted you’d do. (Cough, cough.)

Ahem. So. What’s this? Ahah… a sentence that almost actually raises an issue, rather than attacking a person? But wait… no, I was wrong. It’s a direct and unfounded insult. Again. I am disappointed in you.

Please, tell me: just exactly what do you know, about what I know, about CO2???

Angus, I can appreciate a “scientific approach”, to a certain degree. But you have kept insisting that people prove to you things that you should already know on your own. Are you really implying that you have been discussing this subject for months now, but you are still so ignorant about it? Nevertheless, although I think you are being deliberately obtuse and therefore an ass, I will waste my time and answer some of your questions.

Quote: “I want examples of what you’re saying. I’m tired of climate deniers saying things and never backing it up with hard evidence (blogs are not hard evidence).”

Come on, Angus. If you don’t know what I meant then you should. But on the off-chance that I wasn’t clear enough for you, I was referring to things like “hide the decline”, and concentrating on disparaging remarks in the emails, and comments in the computer code, etc. Not that “hide the decline” is actually a non-issue, unless you believe Mann’s excuse, but my point being that the things the media were constantly rehashing were really not issues that would ever determine the real questions, such as whether the central thesis of Jones, Mann, et al. (AGW) is true or not.

I am not sure what you mean about “backing it up with hard evidence” (that seems out of context with the rest of that paragraph), but if you are referring to the article (which is what you mean by “blog post”?) to which I linked, there is plenty of hard evidence to be had there, if one but looks. Prof. Karlen claims that NORDKLIM data does not agree with the data from CRU which was used in the IPCC report. If you want to check that out (hard evidence), a URL for the NORDKLIM data is right there on the page, (and it’s valid, I downloaded the data myself and checked the URL again yesterday), and the HadCRUT3 data is also widely available.

Quote: “If there is more than a small case, let’s see it. All arguments I’ve seen from the deniers are ones based in incomplete understanding of the science, or purposeful misrepresentation of the facts.”

I gave you a link. Prof. Karlen neither has “an incomplete understanding” of the science (he has published his own peer-reviewed papers in that field), and he is not misrepresenting the facts. Again: the data is readily available so that you can verify this for yourself, if you choose. And again, if you choose not to, that’s your business, but it also means you lose the argument by default. And not just the claims by Wibjorn Karlen, but also at least the assertion by Eschenbach that heat island data is in the dataset used as a source by the IPCC report. (It is. And again, there is nothing at all preventing you from verifying this for yourself.)

Quote: “There is no major fraction of the scientific community which supports the opposition”

Please. Are you that naive, or do you think I am??? Then what do you call the Petition Project? I know that some people have chosen to dismiss them, but the reasons I have been given for doing so have so far not been valid. This list of people includes 9,029 PhDs and 7,157 with Master’s degrees. Are all of those scientists? No. But many are. Just go to the site and click the “Qualifications of Signers” link. And there is nothing secret about it; all their names are publicly available, again subject to easy verification.

That’s a “major fraction”, at least in the United States. It is probably safe to expect similar numbers in other industrialized nations, in proportion to the population. And not all US scientists who disagree with AGW are on the list, of course. I would actually expect those who are to be a rather small fraction of the total.

Quote: “Evidence, evidence, evidence! “

You have HAD evidence. Right there at that link I posted. All you have to do is go there and look. If you have actually failed to find any, then you aren’t actually looking.

Quote: “This statement perfectly describes it: You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.“ [emphasis yours]

Ahah! And also hahaha because I got you. So you did go there, after all. No, that statement doesn’t describe it. In fact that statement is demonstrably disingenuous. Karlen WAS looking at the evidence. Not once did Trenberth mention anything that actually refuted Karlen’s claims.

And here YOU were crying for evidence. And yet even you have not even tried to actually refute any of Karlen’s statements. (Which is what I asked for, by the way.) Come now, Angus. I gave you the evidence you asked for (again, all the data is available for you to check) but you do not seem willing to do the same. Let’s see YOURS. If you want to negate anything Karlen said, then bring up the contrary EVIDENCE and let’s see it.

But just for illustration, I will indulge you a bit. I am really not trying to be adversarial, but I was given a challenge, and I am answering it. So as a brief summary:

[Trenberth] “This region, as I am sure you know, suffers from missing data and large gaps spatially. How one covered both can greatly influence the outcome.”

There are some spatial gaps but in comparison to CRU’s own data set they are pretty minor. The coverage of NORDKLIM is relatively good for the time frames involved. And let’s not forget that NORDKLIM is hard data, not reconstructions from proxies.

[Trenberth] “Anomalies of over 5C are evident in some areas in SSTs but the SSTs are not established if there was ice there previously.”

Totally irrelevant to mention the effects of sea surface temperature data, since according to the report it was supposed to be excluded from the data used.

[Trenberth] “Africa is notorious for missing and inaccurate data and needs careful assessment.”

Here Trenberth completely ignored Karlen’s mentions of Nordic and other northern hemisphere data, including from NASA, and even Karlen’s comment that “… there are a large number of stations in the NASA records. I found 11 stations including data from 1898-1975 and 16 stations including 1950-2003.” It’s almost like Kevin Trenberth did not want to discuss real data. But I am not going to pretend I can read his mind. I just have to wonder why Trenberth is being so evasive and not directly addressing ANYTHING Karlen was writing about.

[Karlen] “Another example is Australia. NASA only presents 3 stations covering the period 1897-1992. What kind of data is the IPCC Australia diagram based on?”

[Trenberth] “See our chapter and the appendices.”

(Which say that the data that was used was HadCRUT3. Which again, is readily available. If you don’t already have it, I would be happy to email you a copy of mine.)

[Karlen] “I have noticed that major cities often demonstrate a major urban effect (Buenos Aires, Osaka, New York Central Park, etc). Have data from major cities been used by the laboratories sending data to IPCC? … “

[Trenberth] “Major inner cities are excluded: their climate change is real but very local.”

Except that they aren’t. Heat island data is definitely included in the dataset they claim to have used.

Karlen cites more references and data but Trenberth does not address any of it. Instead he replies as above; the quote with which you responded to me. Stating that Karlen has to “establish a basis”. Which he in fact does, again and again, but Trenberth completely failed to address ANY of the specifics that Karlen brought up. If anything, he seemed evasive:

[Trenberth] “… You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.”

Which is interesting, because Karlen showed that he was willing to discuss much larger and more varied areas than just “one spot narrowly”, and he was willing and able to cite references. It was Trenberth who would not actually discuss any specifics. (Except about sea surface temperature and sea ice, which were completely irrelevant to the discussion.) Further, he did not deny that CO2 was a greenhouse gas or anything of the sort, and he sure as hell did not deny that it had increased. He simply challenged the idea that it was a scary disaster waiting to happen. So Trenberth’s comment was again off the mark, and something of a straw man.

So actually, Angus, in this case all the EVIDENCE is on the side of the so-called “denialists”. Where is the evidence to refute it? Nobody — including you — has so far produced any. Not even a little. But if you would like to, all the relevant data and information are out there and easy to get: NORDKLIM, HadCRUT3, and the IPCC report. All can be pretty much had for the asking.

So, I repeat: I have heard all these cries of “evidence!” And yet, when some is actually produced, it has been ignored. Almost as though they don’t WANT to see it. It has been either ignored (as most people here have done) or dismissed out of hand without actually addressing the issues raised, as you (and Trenberth, for that matter) have done. I am not really claiming it has been ignored in a literal sense, but I have seen no real attempts to refute any of the real evidence.

“And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts”

“To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may
not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?”

“Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast”

“Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
They were given me by Claudio; he received them”

“Away, I do beseech you, both away:
I’ll board him presently.”

“You, as your business and desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is.”

“Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know”

“Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty”

“In the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption”

“And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out, ‘twould be a sight indeed”

“this ass now o’er-reaches”

“I thank your lordship, it is very hot.”

“You shall know I am set naked on
your kingdom.”

“If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for
thy dowry”

“The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood.”

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. “

Quote: “Lonny, that WordPress blog doesn’t need refuting. The article is an incoherent commentary on some emails lacking a proper context. You yourself admit that Eschenbach is confused. If Karlen or anyone else has an issue with the use of data, or the contribution of heat islands, let them publish some ACTUAL science. Any more of these stupid points based on email snippets and I am once again going to publish my “proof” that Hamlet foretells how AIDS will be caused by gay monkey sex.*
*Disclaimer: It wasn’t. And it doesn’t.
“

Dave, your ignorance is showing. Why don’t you look up a little bit of information about Wibjörn Karlén before opening your mouth about his “science”, eh? You know the old saying: “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

#127 of another earlier thread . Lonny Eachus Says:
“What you seem to be missing here is that all of our data of the historical PAST shows no cause-effect between temperature and CO2 concentrations. Actually, that is not true either… there is a strong correlation, but it is the other way around. In the past, temperature variations were followed about 800 years later by CO2 concentrations. All the evidence we had showed that temperature drove CO2, not the other way around.
So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.”

You had to have the reason why this happened explained to you. If you’d known what you were talking about then you would not have made this basic mistake. Don’t bother trying to blunderingly bluff or distort your way out of this fact.

#239. Lonny Eachus says to Jimmyboy:
“What, you don’t have anything better to do that sit around and cast personal aspersions? Hell, even I can do better than that.”
Except that you aren’t doing anything better than that. Why don’t you use that considerable ego of yours to refute all the findings of all the scientists whose science confirms global warming? Because you can’t. All you can do is try to nitpick in the hopes that your imagined conspiracy will unravel. Keep laughing Lonny, it hides your utter failure to disprove any of the AGW supporting science. I’m sure that Bob Faulks is still laughing at your clownish antics, and so are we.

“The release of the emails was a turning point, a game-changer,” said Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. “The community has been brought up short by the row over their science. Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance.”

And there will be other changes, said Hulme. The emails made him reflect how “astonishing” it was that it had been left to individual researchers to police access to the archive of global temperature data collected over the past 160 years. “The primary data should have been properly curated as an archive open to all.” He believes that will now happen.

========================================================

It is a sad day when a skeptic is branded as a heretic by supposed scientists…..Bacon must be spinning at 1MIL RPM…….

(Please pardon the multiple posts, all. I have been away for a few days, there was a lot to answer, and I am tired.)

Quote: “The article is an incoherent commentary on some emails lacking a proper context. You yourself admit that Eschenbach is confused.”

Eschenbach did compare Nordic data to Northern Europe data. That was a certainly a mistake. But I didn’t say “confused”. In fact many of the other things he states are easily verifiable. (Why haven’t you verified or refuted them? That’s kind of a hypocritical comment. If you want science, why don’t you participate in the process a little bit yourself?)

As for the emails, I have copies of them, including the full thread of the email exchanges. Nothing was taken out of context. It all happened pretty much as reported in that article. If you really want me to, I can post the entirety of the email exchanges here, but they are rather long and it might annoy some people.

But of course, you blew right by that, because we all know by now that reading for comprehension isn’t your strong suit. Just as the U.S. isn’t the same as the whole world when it comes to analysing trends in global climate, so Scandinavia is not the same as Northern Europe. QED.

ETA: OK, I’ve just seen that you’ve been away for a few days, and that you did indeed try to respond to Zeke’s blog post back in post #232. But methinks thou dost protest way too much. I just looked at the NORDKLIM site. The data set ONLY COVERS SCANDINAVIA, just like Zeke says. It is definitely only a *small part* of the Northern European region as considered by the IPCC. You fail, Lonny.

In fact, Lonny, according to the NORDKLIM dataset 1.0 document, only the following countries are represented: Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland (there is also a single station in the Faroe Islands). But Iceland is not included in the IPCC data for the NEU region, so must be excluded.

So in addition to the 4 NORDKLIM countries that intersect with the NEU region, we now also have:

Ireland, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Northern France (48N runs right through Paris), Luxembourg (we’ll concede that one. It’s tiny), all of Germany north of Stuttgart, The Czech Republic, Poland, most of the Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and a huge swath of western Russia that ends to the east of Moscow.

By my reckoning, that represents a land mass at least twice, maybe 3 times the size of those 4 Scandinavian countries. So, you asked anybody to refute that very sloppy blog post When Results Go Bad by Willis Eschenbach. That has now been accomplished, so what next? Oh wait, I know – more whining by yourself, of course. How far are you going to move the goal posts this time, Lonny? What further cherries will be picked by the denialists, hmm?

There you go again, Cyrus. Tell me, didn’t anybody ever teach you how to argue logically in school? It sure seems that you must never have been in debate. Never a hard science class? Or a course in the philosophy of logic?

Let me give you a couple of pointers: If you want to show that somebody is wrong, the first step is to find a place where they are actually wrong. Then you have to SHOW that they are wrong, by presenting EVIDENCE to demonstrate that. And then only if your evidence is better than his, can you be said to have won the argument. And until then, you can yammer until you are blue in the face, and you won’t have gotten anywhere.

My statement about past CO2 was correct. That is what the ice cores and other data show. It is only in modern times that anyone has claimed to see any difference. If you go look at the ice core data yourself, you will see that I was correct. So please show exactly where something I stated there is in error. It is not enough to just say so. Hey… I’m giving you a golden opportunity to actually prove that I was wrong. So if you can, please do so.

And if you are going to bring up something from another thread, would you be so kind as to post a link to that thread, so that people can see what you are talking about? You would be doing everybody a favor.

Quote: “Except that you aren’t doing anything better than that.” That’s a bit premature, isn’t it? I presented some evidence of what you would no doubt refer to as “my side” of the argument, and I’m still waiting for someone to refute that. One person tried, and failed miserably.

COME ON, people. You asked for science. For some real evidence. You got some, and you sit there making personal comments and doing little else! I thought you were supposed to be on the side of science! PROVE ME WRONG if you can. Don’t just sit there repeating the same old fluff.

In fact the reactions of many of you have been so ridiculous I am really getting to the point where I must insist that you either put up or shut up. I gave you what you asked for. Refute it if you can. And that doesn’t mean calling people names, or saying that something ELSE they said might have been wrong, or any of that rot. Prove that any of Karlen’s assertions in that article are wrong. That’s all you have to do. But rather than actually DOING it, even though many of you said you would welcome an opportunity, instead you act like I spit on your grandmother or something.

Cyrus, before you can legitimately accuse me of having a big ego, you have to actually show that I am wrong. What you call “ego” is simply defending a position that NOBODY has so far shown to be wrong. By that measure, if we are to take the things YOU say as gospel, then Michael Mann and Phil Jones should have heads the size of blimps. You can’t have that both ways.

This discussion was about “ClimateGate”, and the “leaked” emails. I have given you something about them that is significant enough to call for actual refutation. All you are doing is throwing straw-man arguments and insults willy-nilly. I hate to sound like a broken record, but that’s all any of you have really been doing. I thought I could come here and at least have a civil discussion about real issues, with people who are supposed to pride themselves on their scientific (and skeptical, let’s not forget) outlook. Instead it has been like cage-cleaning time at the zoo.

DaveH: You say you “have” science. If so, then I challenge you to prove it. All you have been so far is acting like a child. You have not once addressed any of the actual issues I raised.

And no, I did not, anywhere, claim that Prof. Karlen wrote papers specifically about the NORDKLIM data. But he sure did reference it… which is a damn sight better than what you have been doing.

And why do you keep bringing up the fact that James Watts’ website is on WordPress? So what? So is RealClimate! I am only interested in discussing the actual issues. The particular medium used to express them is pretty much irrelevant.

My statement about past CO2 was correct. That is what the ice cores and other data show. It is only in modern times that anyone has claimed to see any difference. If you go look at the ice core data yourself, you will see that I was correct. So please show exactly where something I stated there is in error. It is not enough to just say so. Hey… I’m giving you a golden opportunity to actually prove that I was wrong. So if you can, please do so.

No, your evidence is correct, but the conclusions you draw from that evidence are totally and completely wrong. You would know your conclusion was wrong if you had any actual understanding of climate change. Nobody who actually understand climate change could possibly not know what a feedback is, and you obviously don’t or else you would know why your conclusion is nonsense. You would know this if you had bothered to do even the slightest research in non-denialist sources, since this is one of the more commonly-debunked denialist talking points. You would also know your conclusions were wrong if you had actually bothered to think about how those situations and the current one are different. You would also know your conclusion was wrong if you had a basic understanding of logic, specifically the Non Causa Pro Causa fallacy. You sure seem to like to talk about logic and insult other people for not understanding it despite the fact that you committed one of the most basic and most famous logic fallacies of them all.

Just think about this for a second: can you name any other instance, within the history of the proxies we have available, where massive amounts of very old carbon were released in a very short amount of time? Of course not, that is because the stuff is normally safely locked under ground. That is the reason why CO2 has lagged climate change in the past, CO2 changes were triggered by and amplified existing warming or cooling trends. That doesn’t mean CO2 doesn’t affect global climate, it just means CO2 is not suddenly released out of the blue for no reason, something else has to trigger its release. Then it can and does have a large impact on the climate.

To argue that because there hasn’t been another instance where organisms where digging up and burning huge amounts of organic matter that has been buried for hundreds of millions of years therefore CO2 doesn’t affect climate is ludicrous in the extreme. There are lots of things that can trigger CO2 release. Climate change is one of them. Humans are another. In fact, not only are scientists not ignoring those previous instances, they are very concerned that the current AGW may trigger the release of addition carbon locked in other reservoirs, amplifying the current warming trend even further.

You would know all this if you had either done either a tiny bit of research on the subject or if you had just thought for a few seconds about how those situations and this one are different.

Quoe: “Hate to rain on your little denialist parade, but Zeke over at The Blackboard has done just that in marvelously convincing fashion, way back in post #121: When results aren’t bad

But of course, you blew right by that, because we all know by now that reading for comprehension isn’t your strong suit. Just as the U.S. isn’t the same as the whole world when it comes to analysing trends in global climate, so Scandinavia is not the same as Northern Europe. QED.”

I know I “threw down the gauntlet, Steve. I did it on purpose, to shake up some of the smug grins in this little crowd. But in fact I first did it months ago, in another blog post of Phil’s, and a couple of other since. But yesterday was the first time I had seen where anyone (Zeke) had so much as made an attempt to even address the actual issues that are raised there.

And I did not blow past anything. I was away for a few days. If you scroll up (which you may have done already) you will see that I had already addressed just about every point of Zeke’s critique.

And I don’t even know why I am answering you, after remarks like “comprehension isn’t your strong suit”. Is there ANYBODY here who knows how to make a good scientific argument without resorting to insults? Anybody? Willing to have an actual discussion of the issues without making personal attacks? I really expected better of a crowd that follows Phil. I mean, I really did.

@246 Steve in Dublin again:

Well, for someone who likes to make insults like “comprehension isn’t your strongsuit”, you sure didn’t read very closely, did you?

Quote: “The data set ONLY COVERS SCANDINAVIA, just like Zeke says. It is definitely only a *small part* of the Northern European region as considered by the IPCC. You fail, Lonny.”

Uh… Steve? Please go back and read. THAT IS THE POINT THAT I MADE! Specifically, that you can’t make valid comparisons between data for just Scandinavia, and data for all of Northern Europe! You are simply repeating here what I said! So how is it that I am supposed to have failed?

I clearly pointed out that both Eschenbach and Zeke had mistakenly made comparisons between two incongruent datasets: one for a few Scandinavian countries, and another that covered Northern Europe. And that is a mistake. I wrote that, Steve. Not Zeke. Methinks it is not MY comprehension that has been suffering.

And you repeat pretty much the same thing in 247, apparently without realizing that all you were doing was reinforcing my own arguments. For which I should thank you, by the way, even if it was not done intentionally.

@ Lonny Eachus: I’ll ask you the same question I have been asking everyone else:

what would convince you that global warming is real [and caused primarily by humans]? Note that it should be a standard that, if applied across all of science, will not result in rejecting most of science. For instance the standard creationist demand for a “smoking gun” that you used before, if applied consistently, would result in tossing out the vast majority of science, including science required for building the computers we are using right now.

Note, as I stated before, that some of this question refers to previous discussions with Paul, since he is who I originally directed this question at. These are not meant as insults to you, or to paint you with the same brush, but the warnings still stand.

If only the denialists would check there first before posting their falsehoods or at best cherry-picked half-truths taken mega-parsecs out of context. It might just possibly save us getting the same bunkum so many times over. Like the “we’ve been cooling over the last decade” falsehood, “The other planets are warming” lie, and “the models are unreliable” canard among so many others time & time again. Sigh.

Quote: “No, your evidence is correct, but the conclusions you draw from that evidence are totally and completely wrong. You would know your conclusion was wrong if you had any actual understanding of climate change.”

Correction, BlackCat: the conclusion that I drew, then. That was a long time ago, and I have learned quite a bit since. I do not make the same assertion anymore. The only reason I mentioned it above was to try to goad DaveH into actually making some kind of intelligent argument, instead of just sitting around throwing insults at people. I actually thought it was kind of amusing that he went back and found some issue from months ago, and brought it forward as though it were something I said yesterday. And I’m not even married to him. (Nor do I want to be, of course.)

And I haven’t been insulting anybody about their logic. I have simply been asking if they understood any. There IS a difference, Cat. On the other hand, I have been insulted mercilessly.

And if you really want to discuss the truth, I did not commit the “non causa pro causa” fallacy. If you look at what I actually wrote, (about ice cores, and data from the far past, not about anything recent) my point was that according to that data, the CO2 could not have caused the corresponding temperature rise, because the CO2 did not rise until later. I am not about to go for the Post Hoc fallacy either, but the fact is that if it happened afterward, it could not be the cause. But that’s all. I did not seriously claim that the higher temperatures caused the CO2 to rise. (At one point I did state something to the effect of “the CO2 did not cause the warming. If anything, it was the other way around.” But that is really more of a figure of speech and I do not recall ever having actually asserted that the higher temperatures were a direct cause of the CO2 rising. If I did, please point it out and I will apologize, because I know better than that.

Quote: “Just think about this for a second: …”

You don’t need to explain it to me. I am not as ignorant about the subject as you seem to think.

Quote: “To argue that because there hasn’t been another instance where organisms where digging up and burning huge amounts of organic matter that has been buried for hundreds of millions of years therefore CO2 doesn’t affect climate is ludicrous in the extreme.”

I don’t believe I ever made that claim. Again, if I have, please show me where.

Quote: “You would know all this if you had either done either a tiny bit of research on the subject or if you had just thought for a few seconds about how those situations and this one are different.”

Where did you get the idea that I didn’t “know all that”? At least, I know the theories and what the positions are on those theories. (Although I reserve the right to disagree with theories that I have reason to believe are flawed… just as you do.) Honestly, BlackCat, you are making some pretty huge assumptions about what I know and don’t. Apparently based mainly on one statement I made months ago. That’s a pretty big leap.

And it’s also not very relevant to what I have actually been discussing, because even if all the most apocalyptic theories are correct and AGW is real, immediate, and catastrophic, that does absolutely nothing to counter the assertion that CRU and IPCC used some of their data very improperly in one of the IPCC reports.

And nothing else presented in this particular blog has done anything to counter it either. I am just trying to get some of these armchair “scientists” to GET OFF THEIR BUTTS, GO GET THE ACTUAL INFORMATION, LOOK AT IT, THINK ABOUT IT, AND ACTUALLY VERIFY OR REFUTE SOMETHING!

In other words, to put their money where there mouths are.

But none of them have. Except Zeke. As an actual attempt at refutation it was flawed, but at least he did get off his butt and do something. By that measure, he has scored a lot more points than anyone else here. All the rest of them have been doing is sitting around theorizing about why such things couldn’t be so, and slinging insults. But that’s not the way science is done.

I am not the one who has been hypocritical here. I have presented my evidence, and I am waiting for somebody to refute it, with evidence, if they can. After all, that’s what they demanded of me.

Correction, BlackCat: the conclusion that I drew, then. That was a long time ago, and I have learned quite a bit since. I do not make the same assertion anymore.

The fact that you ever even considered such a absolutely terrible argument is extremely disturbing and casts a lot of doubt on your credibility.

The only reason I mentioned it above was to try to goad DaveH into actually making some kind of intelligent argument, instead of just sitting around throwing insults at people.

Okay, so rather than admit your made a completely bone-headed argument you instead chose to stand by it just so you could provoke and argument. There is a word for people who do that: “troll”.

I actually thought it was kind of amusing that he went back and found some issue from months ago, and brought it forward as though it were something I said yesterday.

Whether you said it now or 20 years ago doesn’t make the slightest difference, it is one of the worst AGW denialist arguments of all time. It shows you are willing to make pronouncements on a subject you know absolutely nothing about, a subject you have not done any research on except from denialists sources, and a subject you have not given the slightest bit of independent thought to.

And I haven’t been insulting anybody about their logic. I have simply been asking if they understood any.

Oh sorry, because thinly-veiled insults are so much better than explicit ones. Sorry, I don’t think anyone is buying that you didn’t intend to be the slightest bit insulting with this comment:

There you go again, Cyrus. Tell me, didn’t anybody ever teach you how to argue logically in school? It sure seems that you must never have been in debate. Never a hard science class? Or a course in the philosophy of logic?

And if you really want to discuss the truth, I did not commit the “non causa pro causa” fallacy. If you look at what I actually wrote, (about ice cores, and data from the far past, not about anything recent) my point was that according to that data, the CO2 could not have caused the corresponding temperature rise, because the CO2 did not rise until later.

No, that isn’t all you said. You also said that the idea that CO2 can cause warming is contradicted by past warming episodes. That is the fallacy, that the fact that CO2 happened later in warming trends is somehow evidence against CO2 being able to cause warming.

You don’t need to explain it to me. I am not as ignorant about the subject as you seem to think.

The problem isn’t your ignorance, the problem is your arrogance in thinking you could adequately critique a subject you knew nothing about.

Where did you get the idea that I didn’t “know all that”?

If you had known that, you wouldn’t have made the claims that you did.

Although I reserve the right to disagree with theories that I have reason to believe are flawed… just as you do.

And that right there is the problem. You obviously already felt this way even when, as you admit now, you had no clue about the subject.

And it’s also not very relevant to what I have actually been discussing, because even if all the most apocalyptic theories are correct and AGW is real, immediate, and catastrophic, that does absolutely nothing to counter the assertion that CRU and IPCC used some of their data very improperly in one of the IPCC reports.

And in order to do so you resort to trolling. I can’t blame people for getting annoyed at that.

Quote: “What would convince you that global warming is real [and caused primarily by humans]? Note that it should be a standard that, if applied across all of science, will not result in rejecting most of science. For instance the standard creationist demand for a “smoking gun” that you used before, if applied consistently, would result in tossing out the vast majority of science, including science required for building the computers we are using right now.”

I don’t think I ask a lot. Let me make a list of bullet points, and I will elaborate just a bit afterward.

(1) I would like to see data handled in a manner that is actually professional. By that I mean kept organized, kept documented, no arbitrary deletions or “losses” of large amounts of data.

(2) I would like to see that the data is manipulated in a professional manner. That is to say, statistically valid smoothing, merging, and adjustment techniques. I will say a little more about points 1 and 2 in a bit.

(3) I would like to see that the data, methods, and conclusions of research that is done using public dollars, be released to the public that paid for it. I am fine with waiting until after publication to release it, but then it should be released immediately, without question or prevarication.

(4) More specifically to this particular case, I would like to see data that is a bit more solid than questionable extrapolations from the rings of literally just a few trees. I am aware that there is other data too, but if you are not very familiar with that particular research community you might be surprised at how many times that same data has been referenced in OTHER research reports and papers. The impact of this one set of data has been multiplied quite a bit by the number of other papers that have referenced it.

So to expand a bit on some of these points:

There is little doubt that the data used and generated by Mann, Jones, and the CRU crew was handled carelessly. In order to verify the validity of their derived data, it is crucial that original data is kept, and that how the derived data was in fact derived is documented. That would not necessarily be the case for experimental research, where the experiment itself can be repeated, but this was not experimental research. This was ALL ultimately based on external data, and how they manipulated that data. The data is everything. So a continuous history is essential if you want to lay any claim to valid results. And they don’t have one: according to them, early and intermediate data, and some of the algorithms they were put through, no longer exist. It could be that they were lying so that they would not have to release the data to the hated McIntyre and McKitrick, and if so maybe the history is in fact intact somewhere, but also if so they committed a different breach of ethics that was was equally bad (hiding information to prevent its release).

As for point (2), there is also little doubt that some of their statistical methodologies were… well, let’s just say “questionable”. In fact, in his report for the US Senate, Wegman concluded that their methods “did not support their conclusions” (that 1998 was the hottest year). And to anticipate the complaint that I have heard many times, yes Wegman’s paper WAS peer-reviewed. By no less than 6 respected statisticians, none of whom found fault with it. Moreover, those 6 had never been collaborators with Wegman on any research or papers. But the reviewers of the papers in question (“MBH” papers, for Mann, Bradley, and Hughes) in fact had been collaborators with MBH on other papers. So there is strong argument that the Wegman report was actually reviewed more thoroughly and objectively than the MBH papers themselves.

Further yet, investigators at East Anglia, AND Penn State, AND the British House of Commons, have each stated publicly that the researchers would do well to consult with some actual statisticians to make sure that future methodologies are valid. As I state in an earlier post, the House of Commons committee stated right out: “… they may have followed accepted policy but the policy has to change.”

To me, point 3 is beyond question. If research is paid for by tax dollars, and its secrecy is not essential to national security, then it belongs to the public. Okay, fine, publish first, but then cough it up.

I think point 4 is pretty self-evident. Even among the climate researchers the tree ring data was subject to a lot of debate and disagreement.

So that’s what it boils down to. We should not be basing public policy on research that has so many holes in it, and even more potential holes. And it’s too late to go back and fill most of those holes in.

You asked what would convince me, and that is pretty much it: plug those holes before the research starts, and run a tight ship. Then I might be inclined to accept your conclusions. I organized the points as sort of a “wish list”. And if those wishes were met, I’d be one hell of a lot more convinced.

People have attacked me here for being a “conspiracy theorist”. But I’m not. I am far more of the opinion that it was sheer complacency and incompetence that caused these problems, than any “conspiracy”. But it also matters fairly little to me because from where I sit, the ultimate result is the same: lack of credibility and lack of confidence in the science, and an upset and skeptical public.

But since it’s a wish list, I would also include this, which is not a matter of “convincing” so much, as it is about practicality:

(5) Unless the projected outcome is an absolute cataclysm that will hit us in less than a year, I want scientists AND politicians AND the public to take time to sit down, mutually and freely share information and ideas, and come up with policies that actually make sense. To shove through policies in a hurry when so little is known (and much of the science is so questionable), is a big mistake. Rushed legislation, and even worse emergency legislation, has a nasty and fairly consistent habit of being bad legislation.

Quote: “The fact that you ever even considered such a absolutely terrible argument is extremely disturbing and casts a lot of doubt on your credibility.”

I see. So you have never made mistakes? Even bad ones? Pardon me, but unless you can convince me that you haven’t, you are presuming an awful lot here again.

Quote: “Okay, so rather than admit your made a completely bone-headed argument you instead chose to stand by it just so you could provoke and argument. There is a word for people who do that: “troll”.”

You are simply incorrect. I did admit that it was a mistake. Go back and READ! Further, I did not state that I was trying to “provoke an argument”. That is a deliberate distortion of what I wrote. I was trying to get him to engage in a reasoned discussion (“argument” only in the sense of debate) rather than nothing but baseless insults. Your “troll” comment was completely out of line, and I think you really know that.

Quote: “Whether you said it now or 20 years ago doesn’t make the slightest difference, it is one of the worst AGW denialist arguments of all time. It shows you are willing to make pronouncements on a subject you know absolutely nothing about, a subject you have not done any research on except from denialists sources, and a subject you have not given the slightest bit of independent thought to. “

And to judge people so harshly based on one mistake made a long time ago has a name too. But I’m too polite to put it in print.

Quote: “Oh sorry, because thinly-veiled insults are so much better than explicit ones. Sorry, I don’t think anyone is buying that you didn’t intend to be the slightest bit insulting with this comment: ‘There you go again, Cyrus. Tell me, didn’t anybody ever teach you how to argue logically in school? It sure seems that you must never have been in debate. Never a hard science class? Or a course in the philosophy of logic?'”

There is nothing veiled about it, thinly or otherwise. I asked him some sharp but genuine questions. AFTER, mind you, he had already insulted me a number of times first, and had never even once attempted to make a reasoned argument. Sorry, but you just fail on that criticism. I had actually been — even up to and including that point — a hell of a lot more polite than he had been.

Quote: “No, that isn’t all you said. You also said that the idea that CO2 can cause warming is contradicted by past warming episodes. That is the fallacy, that the fact that CO2 happened later in warming trends is somehow evidence against CO2 being able to cause warming.”

I asked you politely earlier, and I will ask one more time: please show me, specifically, where I wrote such a thing, and if you are correct, I will apologize for it. I’m not trying to get away with anything here; I am being honest and putting my cards on the table.

I knew quite a lot more than nothing, but perhaps not as much as I thought I did at the time. But ignorance is correctable. You berate me for not knowing a specific thing (far from “nothing”) in the past. Wow. That’s an awful lot of harping over the same mistake.

Quote: “If you had known that, you wouldn’t have made the claims that you did.”

What I wrote was intended in the PRESENT tense, not the past. True, I probably should have written “where did you get the idea that I do not know such things”. But I sometimes pick up bad language habits from the people who live around here. I am not picking on them… every region has their own bad habits.

Quote: “And that right there is the problem. You obviously already felt this way even when, as you admit now, you had no clue about the subject. “

Nothing of the sort. I do not admit even now that I had no clue about “the subject.” I do admit that I was definitely wrong on that specific point.

Quote: “And in order to do so you resort to trolling. I can’t blame people for getting annoyed at that.”

At no time have I resorted to trolling in this blog.

Man… you sure started out sounding reasonable. I answered you in a reasonable and polite manner, and then you’re all over me. Wow. Seven times in one post about the same error, made months ago. Are you by any chance female? Just asking, for my own information. I’m keeping a tally.

Quote: “Karlen has NO paper on the NORDKLIM data? Really? Then I’m still completely disinterested in his stated objections.”

I am not being rude, just asking honestly: am I supposed to care for some reason?

I honestly don’t know whether he has written papers about it or using it. He certainly has written papers on the general subject, but I do not know what data in particular he used in his studies.

But I am puzzled. You jumped into a discussion that by your own account did not concern you, made a few inconsequential remarks and a LOT of insults, and now claim (on some inscrutable basis) to have no interest?

Very interesting. I just have to wonder — honestly — why you inserted your nose in the first place.

“There you go again, Cyrus. Tell me, didn’t anybody ever teach you how to argue logically in school? It sure seems that you must never have been in debate. Never a hard science class? Or a course in the philosophy of logic?”

You’re one to lecture someone on logic or anything when you consistently either miss the point or actively misconstrue what others say to you.

“Let me give you a couple of pointers: If you want to show that somebody is wrong, the first step is to find a place where they are actually wrong. Then you have to SHOW that they are wrong, by presenting EVIDENCE to demonstrate that. And then only if your evidence is better than his, can you be said to have won the argument. And until then, you can yammer until you are blue in the face, and you won’t have gotten anywhere.”

You’ve already been shown to be wrong. If you can’t go back to the earlier thread and see why you’re wrong you’re hiding from that fact, since you can go on the net to link to a favourite piece of denier misinformation it can’t be just laziness on your part.

#250 The Black Cat certainly has had his coffee and is on the ball, unlike you Lonny:

“No, your evidence is correct, but the conclusions you draw from that evidence are totally and completely wrong. You would know your conclusion was wrong if you had any actual understanding of climate change. Nobody who actually understand climate change could possibly not know what a feedback is, and you obviously don’t or else you would know why your conclusion is nonsense. You would know this if you had bothered to do even the slightest research in non-denialist sources, since this is one of the more commonly-debunked denialist talking points. You would also know your conclusions were wrong if you had actually bothered to think about how those situations and the current one are different. You would also know your conclusion was wrong if you had a basic understanding of logic, specifically the Non Causa Pro Causa fallacy. You sure seem to like to talk about logic and insult other people for not understanding it despite the fact that you committed one of the most basic and most famous logic fallacies of them all.”

So Lonny have you and your mate adam, the possible scientist (he won’t give us any evidence that he actually is!) converted Phil Plait to your “important” faith in denialism yet?

Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been. What I don’t understand is: why would Karlen’s having personally written a paper on NORDKLIM have any bearing on the issue at all? It’s a set of instrumental temperature data. It’s perfectly valid for him to reference it, even if he hasn’t personally written a paper about it. And he may have; I honestly don’t know.

He has written plenty of papers. He was even a collaborator with Briffa and Jones on Climate Fluctuations and Forcing Mechanisms of the Last 2,000 Years and also (as far as collaborations with CRU) on A 1,400-year tree-ring record of summer temperatures in Fennoscandia, Fennoscandian summers from A.D.500: temperature changes on short and long timescales, Regional temperature patterns across Northern Eurasia: tree-ring reconstructions over centuries and millennia, Tree-ring variables as proxy-climate indicators: problems with low-frequency signals and possibly more.

“Apologies, this particular sentence escaped me at first, my eye skipped down to the links you had posted: “We’re still laughing at your basic lack of knowledge when it comes to CO 2.

“I find that to be a very interesting statement, Cyrus. Oops, just a moment while I try to stop laughing about your having done just exactly what I predicted you’d do. (Cough, cough.)”

And Phil predicted what you’re doing on this thread:
“Nor will it stop the deniers at large. Expect the comments below to be filled with changing goalposts, poisoning of the well (something along the lines of “scientists shouldn’t be investigating scientists”, even though what they were investigating was Dr. Mann’s scientific conduct), distractions, diversions, and just general noise — anything to bury the cold fact that the scientists involved with modeling global warming did not cheat, did not fake any data, and the bigger issue that climate change is real. ”

So I guess that gives Phil priority to guffaw at your antics.

Lonny Eachus said:

“Ahem. So. What’s this? Ahah… a sentence that almost actually raises an issue, rather than attacking a person? But wait… no, I was wrong. It’s a direct and unfounded insult. Again. I am disappointed in you.”

If you find your lack of knowledge about CO2 level change insulting then that is good. We find it insulting that you don’t even know the basics on this subject. We are very disappointed in you Lonny, especially as you so casually dismiss a fact (that you don’t know the basics) with an ad hominem. But then again we’d expect such tactics from a denialist. Its so engrained in you that your coping mechanism is to deny it when you’ve been shown to be ignorant.

Quote: “You’ve already been shown to be wrong. If you can’t go back to the earlier thread and see why you’re wrong you’re hiding from that fact, since you can go on the net to link to a favourite piece of denier misinformation it can’t be just laziness on your part.”

Pardon me? It’s one thing to have a link that can be found on Google or something, but you honestly expect me to go back and hunt through a large number of Phil’s blog posts for some vague “disproof” that you won’t even describe? If you want to show it to me, show it to me. But I’m not going to spend possibly hours hunting up something that may not even exist.

As far as I am concerned, this is just another empty claim. If you know where such a post may be, why don’t you just tell us all where it is? I’m not going to go looking for a needle in a haystack.

And re-quoting what others have written and I have already responded to does little but take up space.

Quoting Phil: “Nor will it stop the deniers at large. Expect the comments below to be filled with changing goalposts, poisoning of the well (something along the lines of “scientists shouldn’t be investigating scientists”, even though what they were investigating was Dr. Mann’s scientific conduct), distractions, diversions, and just general noise — anything to bury the cold fact that the scientists involved with modeling global warming did not cheat, did not fake any data, and the bigger issue that climate change is real. ”

I like this one. Okay, please explain where I changed the goalposts (I have made the same challenge for months, and haven’t changed it a bit.)

Or “poisoned the well”. Where have I distracted or diverted? On the contrary, I have kept having to remind people what my challenge was all about and bring them back to the SAME, consistent, subject.

Noise? I have been doing nothing but replying to others here. And unlike those others, I have (where it has been possible and still answer some of the bizarre assertions some people have made) stayed on topic, not made ad hominem arguments, or any of that rot.

Nor, for that matter, have I anywhere denied that climate change was real.

Oops. Almost missed this one: “If you find your lack of knowledge about CO2 level change insulting then that is good. “

“Lack of knowledge of CO2 level change”?? You mean that old mistake I made, months ago? That’s been hashed over and done, dude. You seem to feel that demonstrating that I can make ANY mistakes at all, ever, must mean I am perpetually ignorant.

Look at all of you losers wasting your lives trying to convince the unconvincable. I bet you’ve all spent the equivalent of days or weeks writing comments and rebuttals here – for what? There isn’t any good will in these exchanges, no respect for even the people holding opposing views, let alone the view itself. Nobody is changing their minds – I don’t think a single person would claim that they have been convinced of the opposing viewpoint in all the years that this blog has run articles on this subject.

*Raises hand*

I’ve changed my views on this based in large parts on discussions here.

So why waste your life?

Well there are certainly many far worse ways to waste your life and kill time. 😉

First off, you did not even refute Prof. Karlen’s initial point, which is that the NORDLIM data do not show the temperature increases reported by the papers that were the basis for the IPCC report.

Zeke’s response to Karlen’s point is that the papers which reported those increases were covering a larger area than NORDKLIM. Karlen stated that “…the problem is that I cannot find data supporting the temperature curves in IPCC and also published in e.g. Forster, P. et al. 2007: Assessing uncertainty in climate simulation. Nature 4: 63-64.” Zeke responded by reproducing one of those IPCC’s temperature curves. Seems like a pretty solid refutation to me.

… We can’t selectively choose the successes and failures of the U.N.. Yes, it has failed in some areas, but it has been a resounding success in others. …

The United Nations – like the League of Nations before it – was created to end wars, bring peace to the world & prevent genocides like the Holocaust. That was its primary function – and the UN failed. It’s a bit of a sick joke really especially when you have nations like Syria and China sitting on the Human Rights committee.

“Disagree” is an understatement! We’re talking powerful religions -Catholicism and Islam to name two plus FSM knows how many small cults that will fight such moves to the death. You know how hard its been to get abortion and contraceptive usage and gay marriage accepted – not that they fully are today? Times that by a factor of at least ten if not 100 to imagine governments controlling everybody’ “right” to have children on their terms & limit family size etc … That’s one big ask!

It make sense on paper – its a good idea in the intellectual abstract logical sense – BUT in practice?! Forget it. It’s totally unrealistic given human nature and politico-cultural realities.

Developed world pays for it in the third world, obviously. We need to toss away this idea that the world is a bunch of independent little states that have no bearing on what the other does – everything one country does effects another country. We need to start acting like it.

We do – but we won’t. Again this is nice idea vs sad reality.

As for no-child tax credits – use a system similar to the child tax credits we have now. That bit isn’t very difficult.

It may be possible to reward childless couples and penalise “breeders” (for want of a better word) but I can’t see such methods being effective enough – reproduction is a basic biological urge – very hard to fight against such fundamental instincts. It’ll probably result in the rich being able to have more children than the poor – and that might get very ugly, very quickly.

If a dissenting nation chooses to kill off its citizens, then we engage them. We will not force people to sign onto such a treaty, but if they choose to make their own solution of eradicating their own people, then the rest of the treaty signatories would stop them.

Stop them how? Polite diplomacy? Sanctions? Gee such methods have done so much good against Iran and North Korea and previously Iraq etc .. before – NOT.

Sometimes military action is the only possible means of stopping great evil – exhibit A – World War II. There are such things as just wars.
Even the most ethically justified conflict takes many lives including innocent ones and causes great destruction – this, again, is one of the sad bvut unavoidable truths. Depressing I know.

However, naive pacifism and cowardly failure to act can sometimes be more harmful and less excusable in the long term. Just compare Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill in history’s ledger. One is a hero, a great leader, the other a pathethic duped villain – and the one who history says got things catastrophically wrong was the appeaser.

That solution is much more sensible than the “the only solution may be to take out India and China” one that you mulled over earlier.

On paper yes. In practice .. we know the sensible course of action won’t be followed because we’re human.

My musings before were NOT suggested or recommended solutions any more than Cassandra ‘s tragic prophecies were – the trojan princess fated totell teh future buthave no-one believ her – y’know the story surely! I don’t want to see those thoughts come true but I really fear they probably will.

I’m putting my hopes in two main things at the moment :

1) the Catastrophe won’t be as bad as predicted &
2) we’ll come up with some technological answer. Somehow.

Lonny will never, ever admit that he made a single mistake. Ever. That is the hallmark of a denier and a troll. In post #35 he asked anybody to refute what Willis Eschenbach wrote in When Results Go Bad. Zeke did that in post #121, pointing out that in one e-mail exchange, Karlen looked at temperature anomalies for the NORDKLIM region (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) and tried to compare the results with a *much larger region* (Northern Europe, NEU) from the IPCC AR4-WG1 report.

So now, having been caught out, Lonny moves the goalposts. It is pointless trying to engage with a
slimy, denialist troll like Lonny. Completely pointless. He will argue any point you try to make. Even if you said the sky was blue, Lonny would try to come up with some argument to refute that. What a waste of time.

He will argue any point you try to make. Even if you said the sky was blue, Lonny would try to come up with some argument to refute that.

Well, being horribly pedantic for the LOL’s here, the sky is also actually black and sometimes grey depending on your time and place. There’;s alwatys night & on Mars its salmon coloured except for the blue sunsets and black starry nights. On Venus the sky is a murky searing yellow-orange or so I understand. 😉

What a waste of time.

Why do this then? 😉

Actually, I can suggest a possible answer – that its to convince the *other* readers who persevere this far and keep rebutting the bull. Arguing not so much for Lonny (although I guess you never know) as for others who you fear may be taken in by his words here? Am I right? 😉

I see. So you have never made mistakes? Even bad ones? Pardon me, but unless you can convince me that you haven’t, you are presuming an awful lot here again.

You aren’t listening to me. The problem isn’t the mistake, the problem is that you thought yourself qualified to critique a field you didn’t understand even the most fundamental aspects of. We are talking about a mistake on the level of the creationists’ “crocoduck”, a mistake which shows a profound lack of understanding of even the basics of the field. Yet you still were arrogant enough to think yourself able to counter the entire climatology community.

It also shows you hadn’t bothered to do any research whatsoever outside of denialist sources and you hadn’t bothered to take 30 seconds to see if your criticism had already been addressed. Both are really serious problems in your approach and cast a lot of doubt on your credibility.

You are simply incorrect. I did admit that it was a mistake. Go back and READ!

I read it again. I see nothing about you admitting it was a mistake, all I see is you standing by your earlier statement and challenging someone else to show where it was wrong. I then showed where it was wrong, only then did you start complaining that you didn’t actually think it was right.

Further, I did not state that I was trying to “provoke an argument”. That is a deliberate distortion of what I wrote. I was trying to get him to engage in a reasoned discussion (”argument” only in the sense of debate) rather than nothing but baseless insults. Your “troll” comment was completely out of line, and I think you really know that.

I thought so for a second, then I re-read your actual statement as you suggested and now I am convinced you were definitely trolling. You did not express the slightest doubt about your earlier statements, you insulted cyrus then challenged him/her to show where what you said was wrong.

There is nothing veiled about it, thinly or otherwise. I asked him some sharp but genuine questions. AFTER, mind you, he had already insulted me a number of times first, and had never even once attempted to make a reasoned argument. Sorry, but you just fail on that criticism. I had actually been — even up to and including that point — a hell of a lot more polite than he had been.

Sorry, not buying it. That was an obvious insult.

I asked you politely earlier, and I will ask one more time: please show me, specifically, where I wrote such a thing, and if you are correct, I will apologize for it. I’m not trying to get away with anything here; I am being honest and putting my cards on the table.

It is right here:

So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.

Nothing of the sort. I do not admit even now that I had no clue about “the subject.” I do admit that I was definitely wrong on that specific point.

Well then you are worse off than I thought. It is like a creationist getting called out on claiming cats not giving birth to dogs disproves evolution, then saying “but I was only wrong on one point”. When it is a really, really basic and fundamental point, that is not a valid excuse.

Are you by any chance female? Just asking, for my own information. I’m keeping a tally.

And sexist to boot. For the record, no, I’m not.

And you feel you are being reasonable, do you?

Yes, I do. Actually, it is clear now I was being overly generous with you. But I tend to err on the side of caution.

“In short, the problem is that I cannot find data supporting the temperature curves in IPCC and also published in e.g. Forster, P. et al. 2007: Assessing uncertainty in climate simulation. Nature 4: 63-64.”

Both the paper and the IPCC figure contain NEU as the highest-resolution graph. Neither attempt to make a reconstruction of just Scandinavian countries. As I pointed out in my post, if we use either GHCN or GSOD data (two mostly independent raw temperature datasets), we can reconstruct the temperature curves seen in the IPCC report. I can only conclude from the context of the emails that Karlen indeed mistook the NEU graph for a Scandinavian-only temperature reconstruction.

As for Scandinavian-only temperature data, NORDKLIM, GHCN, and GSOD all give substantially similar temperature data for the region (which shows the 30s-40s as comparable to today, but just under a 1.5 C warming trend for the whole century). This shouldn’t be surprising, however, since different regions of the world do tend to show somewhat decadal trends (e.g. the U.S. has similarly warm temps in the 30s).

(1) I would like to see data handled in a manner that is actually professional. By that I mean kept organized, kept documented, no arbitrary deletions or “losses” of large amounts of data.

I asked for things that would not require throwing out the vast majority of science. This would. Scientists are short on time, money, space, and manpower. All the reports indicated that the scientists all acted professionally, as defined by accepted practices within the scientific community. If you want that to change, then convince the government to cough up the money to pay for it all.

(2) I would like to see that the data is manipulated in a professional manner. That is to say, statistically valid smoothing, merging, and adjustment techniques. I will say a little more about points 1 and 2 in a bit.

If you can show specific examples where using better methods would have actually changed results, please do so.

(3) I would like to see that the data, methods, and conclusions of research that is done using public dollars, be released to the public that paid for it. I am fine with waiting until after publication to release it, but then it should be released immediately, without question or prevarication.

Take that up with NOAA, scientists have no control over that data. As for the methods and conclusions, which ones have not been released?

(4) More specifically to this particular case, I would like to see data that is a bit more solid than questionable extrapolations from the rings of literally just a few trees. I am aware that there is other data too, but if you are not very familiar with that particular research community you might be surprised at how many times that same data has been referenced in OTHER research reports and papers. The impact of this one set of data has been multiplied quite a bit by the number of other papers that have referenced it.

Obviously, as you get more data sets you add those on to the ones you already have. If the data was so flawed, then as you add other data sets you would expect the results to change substantially. They don’t.

Also, scientist are supposed to reference previous results on the same subject. They need to address how their results mesh with previous results. That is not normal, it is expected, practically required.

There is little doubt that the data used and generated by Mann, Jones, and the CRU crew was handled carelessly.

Yes, scientists are human. Storage is expensive.

In order to verify the validity of their derived data, it is crucial that original data is kept, and that how the derived data was in fact derived is documented.

What original data was not kept? I was under the impression that is the derived data that was not kept, the original data is still available from those who collected it. Also, what methods were not documented? It would be easy to check whether they documented their methods properly, use the same methods listed in their papers and see if the results match. Have you tried to do this? Certainly if they did not explain their methods in their papers that is a problem. Do you have any specific examples where their methods were not explained in their papers?

And they don’t have one: according to them, early and intermediate data, and some of the algorithms they were put through, no longer exist.

Neither the early or intermediate data nor the algorithms are necessary to check the results. All you should need is the methods and original data.

In fact, in his report for the US Senate, Wegman concluded that their methods “did not support their conclusions” (that 1998 was the hottest year).

And when they went back and implemented Wegman’s suggestions, it made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the results. Which you would have known if you had bothered to look to see if Wegman’s report had been addressed by the original researchers. Once again, this is the problem I discussed before with getting your information from denialists without bothering to verify it with non-denialists sources. It took me all of 10 seconds to find where the scientists addressed the report.

Further yet, investigators at East Anglia, AND Penn State, AND the British House of Commons, have each stated publicly that the researchers would do well to consult with some actual statisticians to make sure that future methodologies are valid. As I state in an earlier post, the House of Commons committee stated right out: “… they may have followed accepted policy but the policy has to change.”

I’ve already addressed this in post 148, I am not going to repeat it again. I should point out, though, that this was not because the investigations thought that using different techniques would have changed the conclusions, they said flat-out that didn’t, it was because it would make the conclusions more resistant to criticism.

To me, point 3 is beyond question. If research is paid for by tax dollars, and its secrecy is not essential to national security, then it belongs to the public. Okay, fine, publish first, but then cough it up.

Once again, I asked for criteria that would not require throwing out the much of existing science. They have been trying to change that within the last couple of years, but before that it was not accepted practice in any field of science.

I think point 4 is pretty self-evident. Even among the climate researchers the tree ring data was subject to a lot of debate and disagreement.

Good, then, that AGW does not depend on tree ring data.

So that’s what it boils down to. We should not be basing public policy on research that has so many holes in it, and even more potential holes. And it’s too late to go back and fill most of those holes in.

Well, then we shouldn’t be basing public policy on science period, because all science has holes in it. The reports all stated that nothing the researchers did was at all out of line with how other scientists around the world in a variety of subjects do things, and I haven’t heard of them doing anything different than any other lab I have heard of, not to mention seen.

What is your obsession with the tree ring data, anyway? Even if we threw out all of the paleoclimate reconstructions it would not change the conclusions on AGW in the slightest.

It would be worthwhile for you to actually learn how science is done in practice. You have an idealistic and unrealistic views of the realities of working in scientific research. There is little money, little space, few people, and enormous pressure. You are expecting the scientists to live up to standards few labs in the world in any field could live up to.

Yes, I did (though after these diatribes I am tempted to cease). You are attempting to judge me and everything I know, based on a single error I made a long time ago. And you are correct in one respect: that argument was in fact from a “delialist” source, and I had not used proper critical thinking in examining it before repeating it. That was a mistake. I have already said so… why do you feel the need to keep harping on the matter?

Quote: “I read it again. I see nothing about you admitting it was a mistake, all I see is you standing by your earlier statement and challenging someone else to show where it was wrong.”

Then your memory and reading comprehension both need work. We have discussed this already. have you forgotten so soon? Here, let me refresh your memory: “Correction, BlackCat: the conclusion that I drew, then. That was a long time ago, and I have learned quite a bit since.”

Are you trying to claim that is not an admission of a mistake? Further, the statement I was defending was my earlier statement that in the historical ice core data, the CO2 followed the temperature increases, not the other way around. That is a true statement, and I have no reason to say it is anything else.

Quote: “I thought so for a second, then I re-read your actual statement as you suggested and now I am convinced you were definitely trolling. You did not express the slightest doubt about your earlier statements, you insulted cyrus then challenged him/her to show where what you said was wrong.”

You seem determined to distort my statements and/or my meanings. I did not express doubt about my earlier statement because as far as it went, it was correct (see above). Right there, in the quoted statement, I very clearly wrote that I was referring to evidence of the PAST. It is all in the past tense. Don’t try to argue that I was referring to modern deviations from that; because my statement explicitly contradicts that idea.

A conclusion that the same holds TODAY would be incorrect. And that is the conclusion that I incorrectly drew back then… months ago. And for which I publicly apologize, just as I stated that I would. But what Cyrus quoted is still correct, given the context in which it was written.

And I repeat: I was not trolling at all. I was simply trying to get Cyrus to make some kind of reasoned argument, along the lines of 2 + 2 = 4, rather than just blathering and insulting other people.

Quote: “Sorry I’m not buying it.”

That’s okay. I’m not trying to sell it to you. I made a true and honest statement and you don’t believe me. Fine. You have made that clear. I understood you. But I do find it interesting that even if what you say is true, you have made no mention whatever of the numerous times that Cyrus insulted ME, before that. So pardon me, but your obvious bias is showing rather glaringly.

Quote: “So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.

Nothing of the sort. I do not admit even now that I had no clue about “the subject.” I do admit that I was definitely wrong on that specific point.”

I do admit that the word “all” is a bit of a stretch, but if you put that quote in the context of what I actually wrote at the time, I was clearly referring to the ice core records of the distant past. And in that context, that statement, as quoted is still correct. If you want to yank it out of the context in which it was written, that’s your choice, but I will point out that is what you did.

Quote: “Are you by any chance female? Just asking, for my own information. I’m keeping a tally.”

Really? I am sexist because I asked if you are female? Seems to me there is a question mark right at the end of the sentence. I did not even imply that you were female. I simply asked. I find it interesting that you would leap to the conclusion that someone is sexist simply because they politely asked whether you are female. I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me.

Yes, I did (though after these diatribes I am tempted to cease). You are attempting to judge me and everything I know, based on a single error I made a long time ago. And you are correct in one respect: that argument was in fact from a “delialist” source, and I had not used proper critical thinking in examining it before repeating it. That was a mistake. I have already said so… why do you feel the need to keep harping on the matter?

NO I’M NOT! As I keep saying over and over, I am not judging your level of knowledge, I am judging you attitude and how you approach issues.

Quote: “I read it again. I see nothing about you admitting it was a mistake, all I see is you standing by your earlier statement and challenging someone else to show where it was wrong.”

Then your memory and reading comprehension both need work. We have discussed this already. have you forgotten so soon? Here, let me refresh your memory: “Correction, BlackCat: the conclusion that I drew, then. That was a long time ago, and I have learned quite a bit since.”

That was only after I called you out on it. You still insisted some debate you on a statement you made that you later admitted you already knew was wrong. That is called trolling.

Further, the statement I was defending was my earlier statement that in the historical ice core data, the CO2 followed the temperature increases, not the other way around. That is a true statement, and I have no reason to say it is anything else.

You did not make that remotely clear. You did not give the slightest indication, prior to me pointing out the problem to you, that you had the slightest clue your conclusions were completely wrong. You said “So please show exactly where something I stated there is in error.” You did not say “there” did not include the parts that you knew were wrong but hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about yet.

Quote: “I thought so for a second, then I re-read your actual statement as you suggested and now I am convinced you were definitely trolling. You did not express the slightest doubt about your earlier statements, you insulted cyrus then challenged him/her to show where what you said was wrong.”

You seem determined to distort my statements and/or my meanings. I did not express doubt about my earlier statement because as far as it went, it was correct (see above). Right there, in the quoted statement, very clearly wrote that I was referring to evidence of the PAST. It is all in the past tense. Don’t try to argue that I was referring to modern deviations from that; because my statement explicitly contradicts that idea.

I don’t see anywhere where cyrus said that the statements about the past was wrong. He/she quoted the whole statement, and said the whole statement was wrong, which it is. So either you were asking Cyrus to defend a criticism that wasn’t even made about data that isn’t remotely relevant to the discussion, which is trolling, or you were asking Cyrus to prove wrong what you already knew to be wrong, which is trolling. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were starting an argument over something you knew was wrong, rather than starting an argument over something you knew was irrelevant and that no one had even criticized yet.

Quote: “Sorry I’m not buying it.”

That’s okay. I’m not trying to sell it to you. I made a true and honest statement and you don’t believe me. Fine. You have made that clear. I understood you. But I do find it interesting that even if what you say is true, you have made no mention whatever of the numerous times that Cyrus insulted ME, before that. So pardon me, but your obvious bias is showing rather glaringly.

Please be more specific. I see Cyrus criticizing your lack of knowledge, which given your prior statements was warranted. I see Cyrus criticizing your sources, which also seemed warranted. He criticizes your ego, which I have done and which you still don’t understand. I am not seeing the insults.

Quote: “So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.

Nothing of the sort. I do not admit even now that I had no clue about “the subject.” I do admit that I was definitely wrong on that specific point.”

Well, then I was wrong about you. You can’t understand AGW now if you don’t understand how fundamental your lack of understanding was back then.

I do admit that the word “all” is a bit of a stretch, but if you put that quote in the context of what I actually wrote at the time, I was clearly referring to the ice core records of the distant past. And in that context, that statement, as quoted is still correct. If you want to yank it out of the context in which it was written, that’s your choice, but I will point out that is what you did.

No, it isn’t correct. It isn’t even remotely correctly. You are the one trying to pull it out of context, removing the statement that everyone has been objecting to all along. That statement is the problem. The rest of it has no bearing whatsoever on whether AGW is correct, so isn’t even remotely relevant to the discussion.

It is like a creationist saying that because peppered moths were posed for photographs therefore the results were fabricated, and then when everyone explains how the conclusions were wrong the creationist admits the results weren’t fabricated but then proceeds to claim that he/she was really correct in the statements because the peppered moths really were posed. The data was not what people were objecting to, it was the conclusions. The data cited is irrelevant to the subject being discussed (AGW or evolution in peppered moths), what matters is the conclusions drawn from that data.

Quote: “Are you by any chance female? Just asking, for my own information. I’m keeping a tally.”

Really? I am sexist because I asked if you are female? I would be interested to know how you come to the conclusion that these questions are in fact insulting statements. Seems to me there is a question mark right at the end of the sentence. And I did not even imply that you were female. I simply asked. I find it interesting that you would leap to the conclusion that someone is sexist simply because they politely asked whether you are female. I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me.

Yes, because of course there is no more neutral way to ask such a question. Also, putting the question at the end of a paragraph with a whole list of criticisms of me doesn’t even remotely imply the criticisms and question are linked. I also notice that you have not asked anyone else that question.

Seriously, look at it again:

Man… you sure started out sounding reasonable. I answered you in a reasonable and polite manner, and then you’re all over me. Wow. Seven times in one post about the same error, made months ago. Are you by any chance female? I’m keeping a tally.

You can’t see how anyone might think that progression is remotely sexist? Are you kidding me? This wasn’t some polite question asked in isolation, it was lumped together with a bunch of criticisms. “You started to sound reasonable, then went crazy on me. Are you a woman? Just asking” Yeah, not the slightest hint of sexism there.

Quote: “NO I’M NOT! As I keep saying over and over, I am not judging your level of knowledge, I am judging you attitude and how you approach issues.”

This is, on its very face, a defense of using ad hominem arguments. My approach and my attitude should be pretty much irrelevant to the issues I have been discussing. Why are you focusing on my approach and my attitude, instead of addressing the actual issues? I believe I detect a smidgen of hypocrisy here.

Quote: “That was only after I called you out on it. You still insisted some debate you on a statement you made that you later admitted you already knew was wrong. That is called trolling.”

What you called me on, and what I admitted was a mistake, was an incorrect conclusion I had made long ago based on those statements. Not those statements per se. I thought I had made that pretty clear, more than once. Have you simply been misunderstanding me, or are you deliberately distorting my meanings? I am not accusing; I honestly do not know which. But I have to wonder.

Quote: “Well, then I was wrong about you. You can’t understand AGW now if you don’t understand how fundamental your lack of understanding was back then.”

But I DID admit that the conclusion was a mistake. We have already agreed on that. There is no “lack of understanding” on my part about that point or the reason behind it. Be careful. You have again crossed the line here between reasonable arguments and personal attack.

Quote: “You did not make that remotely clear. You did not give the slightest indication, prior to me pointing out the problem to you, that you had the slightest clue your conclusions were completely wrong. “

That’s because the mentioned conclusion was not included in what Cyrus quoted.

Quote: “You said “So please show exactly where something I stated there is in error.” You did not say “there” did not include the parts that you knew were wrong but hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about yet. “

That’s ridiculous. You expect me to spend hours to go hunting down something I wrote months ago, introduce it into the conversation when it hadn’t even been mentioned, then announce that it was wrong? That is completely unreasonable to the point of being irrational.

In the context in which it was written, that statement is still correct. You keep repeating yourself, as though I did not understand what you are saying. But I am not the one who is lacking understanding here. Let’s look at the whole thing one more time:

“What you seem to be missing here is that all of our data of the historical PAST shows no cause-effect between temperature and CO2 concentrations. Actually, that is not true either… there is a strong correlation, but it is the other way around. In the past, temperature variations were followed about 800 years later by CO2 concentrations. All the evidence we had showed that temperature drove CO2, not the other way around.
So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.”

Data about hundreds to thousand of years ago in ice cores generally follow the pattern mentioned. That part is correct. In the context of the ancient data from those cores (which is what I was referring to) pretty much all the combined evidence does indeed suggest (not “showed”… that word is too strong) that temperature drove CO2 concentrations. They don’t prove it, of course. There are confounding factors such as forcings. But my main point — again in context — was that the evidence in that data do not support the idea that CO2 was driving temperature.

My next statement — again in the context of ancient (“PAST”, right there in capital letters) ice core data — is also, still, correct. Now, extrapolating that to modern times, and concluding that therefore CO2 is not driving some warming today, is clearly incorrect because of modern deviation from that pattern. Which I have already stated, and I admitted to that mistake. But the statements above are clearly and explicitly in reference to that past data, and as such remain correct as far as they go.

I understand completely that the way you interpreted those comments, they are incorrect. But the words themselves, as they stand and in the context of ancient ice cores, are not. If you feel you can show that those words, in the context they were written do not mean what I say here, completely aside from any generalized conclusion based on them (which I did do then and which I have already admitted was wrong) then again, I will apologize. But I don’t see anything to indicate that.

Your comparison to creationism is completely unfounded. Again, rather than personally insulting me by equating me with idiots, or misconstruing my words, please show where they are actually and factually incorrect.

Quote: “Please be more specific. I see Cyrus criticizing your lack of knowledge, which given your prior statements was warranted. I see Cyrus criticizing your sources, which also seemed warranted.”

I stand corrected on that point. I did in fact have Cyrus confused with a couple of other people. For that I apologize to Cyrus. I plead fatigue. But since you brought it up, his attacks on my sources were not made on sound bases. If someone wants to point out valid objections, I am happy to listen to them. But objections on the order of “THE denier site” are not valid arguments. That’s nothing but a de facto ad hominem attack. Issues, people. Issues. This is supposed to be science. It’s the message, not the messenger.

Quote: “Yes, because of course there is no more neutral way to ask such a question. Also, putting the question at the end of a paragraph with a whole list of criticisms of me doesn’t even remotely imply the criticisms and question are linked.”

No, I put it in a SEPARATE paragraph, containing not a single insult. It’s right up above, in print. This statement of yours claim is simply false. And please, can you give me an example of something that would have been “more neutral” under the circumstances? After all, I am trying to be polite.

I did mention that you had criticized me seven times for one error. Because you did in fact criticize me seven times for one error. Tell me honestly: would that fact have changed depending on whether you were of the other sex? (And I still do not know, one way or the other.) If it would not have changed, how could my question be sexist?

You are committing the logical fallacy there (as you have several other times) of “mind reading”: presuming to know what I am thinking, and basing your arguments on that rather than on my actual words. You should know better.

This is, on its very face, a defense of using ad hominem arguments. My approach and my attitude should be pretty much irrelevant to the issues I have been discussing. Why are you focusing on my approach and my attitude, instead of addressing the actual issues? I believe I detect a smidgen of hypocrisy here.

I hoped that if you were made aware of your issues you would make an effort to correct them. Obviously it was a waste, you have no intention whatsoever of improving. Sorry for wasting your time.

What you called me on, and what I admitted was a mistake, was an incorrect conclusion I had made long ago based on those statements. Not those statements per se. I thought I had made that pretty clear, more than once. Have you simply been misunderstanding me, or are you deliberately distorting my meanings? I am not accusing; I honestly do not know which. But I have to wonder.

The one who was misunderstanding was you. You apparently insisted people defend criticism they did not make and were not relevant to the discussion anyway.

That’s because the mentioned conclusion was not included in what Cyrus quoted.

Yes it was. You even quote it two paragraphs down, complete with the conclusion.

That’s ridiculous. You expect me to spend hours to go hunting down something I wrote months ago, introduce it into the conversation when it hadn’t even been mentioned, then announce that it was wrong? That is completely unreasonable to the point of being irrational.

First, I expect you to just admit you were wrong and leave it at them, recognizing that the rest of the quote is irrelevant to the discussion and thus not worth discussing further. If you insist on debating irrelevant details, I would I expect you to say something along the lines of “I admit the conclusions you quoted were wrong, but the evidence I based them on was correct”. You didn’t do that, you just told someone to show where in the quote the error was. I did exactly that. There was no indication that you only wanted part of the quote to be addressed.

My next statement — again in the context of ancient (”PAST”, right there in capital letters) ice core data — is also, still, correct.

Are you kidding me! The part you put in bold was saying that the past evidence is evidence again the CO2 being able to cause warming. That is exactly the point I was criticizing! Yet you said a couple paragraphs back that this sentence wasn’t even in the quote! You start out talking about “the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts”, then say, then you call that “the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.” So, this sentence is pretty clearly saying “the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts” “goes against all PAST evidence.” I am not sure how much clearer you can be than that. According to the quote, the past evidence is against the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts. What else am I supposed to get out of that? It is a pretty straightforward statement. You don’t say anything about the evidence being against CO2 causing any particular temperature shift, you say that the evidence is against CO2 being able to cause temperature shifts at all.

Data about hundreds to thousand of years ago in ice cores generally follow the pattern mentioned. That part is correct. In the context of the ancient data from those cores (which is what I was referring to) pretty much all the combined evidence does indeed suggest (not “showed”… that word is too strong) that temperature drove CO2 concentrations. They don’t prove it, of course. There are confounding factors such as forcings. But my main point — again in context — was that there is no direct evidence that CO2 was actually driving temperature.

Usually, when someone says “So …” that is the main point, just for future reference. That is usually used to indicate the main conclusion, and the main conclusion is usually the main point. So if your main point is something else you should make that clear. And then you put part of the conclusion in all caps to emphasize it, leading further support to the idea that this is what you want people to focus on (usually putting stuff in bold is meant to emphasize it). You can’t really blame me for following the conventions of the English language and assume that was the main point.

No, I put it in a SEPARATE paragraph, containing not a single insult. It’s right up above, in print. This statement of yours claim is simply false.

I quoted it verbatim. I read it again and again. There is no separate paragraph, no paragraph break. I also did not say anything about insults, the word I used was “criticisms”.

I did mention that you had criticized me seven times for one error. Because you did in fact criticize me seven times for one error. Tell me honestly: would that fact have changed depending on whether you were of the other sex? (And I still do not know, one way or the other.) If it would not have changed, how could my question be sexist?

If you put two things in the same paragraph, it is usually because they are linked in your mind. If you put a question about someone in the same paragraph as a bunch of criticisms of that person’s behavior, it implies that you think the behavior in question is in some way linked to the question being asked. Once again, that is a convention in the English language.

You are committing the logical fallacy there (as you have several other times) of “mind reading”: presuming to know what I am thinking, and basing your arguments on that rather than on my actual words. You should know better.

Nope, I just followed the standard conventions of written English. Paragraphs are used to denote a single idea. Paragraph breaks are used to separate an idea. No paragraph break, therefore no separate idea.

Quote: “I hoped that if you were made aware of your issues you would make an effort to correct them. Obviously it was a waste, you have no intention whatsoever of improving. Sorry for wasting your time.”

To what issues do you refer? All I have seen so far is your harping about me knowing nothing, based on a single mistake I made months ago. I ask again: what does that have to do with any of the issues I have been discussing in the last few days? Considering that overall and in sum, it has amounted to nothing but a personal attack, I really don’t see that I have any reason to forgive you. Maybe if you were to see your own issues in all of this, I might change my mind. But notice that I have not been harping on them, as you have.

Nice way to evade my question, though.

Quote: “You apparently insisted people defend criticism they did not make and were not relevant to the discussion anyway.”

Can you please be specific and explain to me just what statements of mine those were? Offhand I am not aware of doing so.

Quote: “First, I expect you to just admit you were wrong and leave it at them…”

Not so fast. It is possible that I misunderstood, but here

“You did not say “there” did not include the parts that you knew were wrong but hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about yet. “”

… you appear to be suggesting that I should have gone back, found that old writing of mine somewhere, and included more of it in the conversation? But perhaps that was due to the misunderstanding about which conclusions you meant. Communication error.

Quote: “Are you kidding me! The part you put in bold was saying that the past evidence is evidence again the CO2 being able to cause warming. That is exactly the point I was criticizing! Yet you said a couple paragraphs back that this sentence wasn’t even in the quote!”

No, I am not kidding you. If that is what you meant, you should have explicitly said so. The conclusion I stated, in the context of the ancient ice core data I was discussing at the time and nothing else, is correct. I have already stated, several times now, that a GENERALIZED conclusion that CO2 cannot cause warming is not correct. And I even admitted to making that mistake some months ago. I thought that was what you were referring to. So the problem here is not as much disagreement as you seem to think, but more of communication.

Now, if you want to throw in just about any other factors, such as potential reinforcement from radiative CO2 forcings and so on (which are much more recent findings than what I was discussing, still very much theoretical, and rely on other data), then clearly this is incorrect. But you don’t get to take it out of context and claim that it is wrong on that basis, which you have consistently done. (Hint: that’s another logical fallacy.)

Quote: “you say that the evidence is against CO2 being able to cause temperature shifts at all.”

Really? Please show me where I stated “at all”. Again you are assuming meanings to my words that did not necessarily exist. “Mind Reading” again. That’s two strikes.

Quote: “I quoted it verbatim. I read it again and again. There is no separate paragraph, no paragraph break. I also did not say anything about insults, the word I used was “criticisms”.”

Pardon me if I used the wrong word. Okay then, criticisms. Here is the entire paragraph:

“Man… you sure started out sounding reasonable. I answered you in a reasonable and polite manner, and then you’re all over me. Wow. Seven times in one post about the same error, made months ago. Are you by any chance female? I’m keeping a tally.”

You called this “a paragraph full of criticisms.” But up until the question, and except for the word “Wow”, everything in that paragraph is nothing more than a simple statement of fact. I suppose “you’re all over me” could be interpreted as criticism, but if so it was a pretty damned mild one, and a considerable understatement. Really, I believe you are deliberately mischaracterizing my words, and making mountains out of molehills, just for the sake of argument. (Hint: that’s called trolling.)

Quote: “If you put two things in the same paragraph, it is usually because they are linked in your mind.”

Mind reading again.

Quote: “Nope, I just followed the standard conventions of written English. Paragraphs are used to denote a single idea. Paragraph breaks are used to separate an idea. No paragraph break, therefore no separate idea.

Nope. “Mind Reading”, a classic fallacy. Going back over some of the things you have written just in this thread, I see that several times you have, yourself, combined more than one idea in a single paragraph. And further, I see that responding in the way that you have to me is a noticeable tendency of yours. You have a genuine and marked habit of assuming you know the thoughts and motivations of others, and criticizing them on the basis of that, rather than their actual words.

Further yet, you also have a tendency to tell people that because they do not know one particular thing (which they may have just missed in the news last month, or in one of Phil’s blog posts) that they know nothing at all. I thought it was just me, but looking back I see that you have done the same to at least several other people.

Several people asked genuine questions, or made particular arguments, obviously because of real ignorance of the issues. And rather than being polite and explaining how they were in error (which might actually serve to further your cause), you attributed their statements to malice rather than ignorance, and for all practical purposes called them morons. (Which, aside from its own problems, is yet another example of what I described in the last paragraph.)

Which brings us back to this:

Quote: “I hoped that if you were made aware of your issues you would make an effort to correct them. Obviously it was a waste, you have no intention whatsoever of improving. Sorry for wasting your time.”

Cat, I am done debating any of this with you. Until you get a grip on your own issues, which I now see are considerable, I no longer acknowledge your competence to be calling me on what you perceive to be mine. Until then, you are indeed wasting my time.

‘In short, the problem is that I cannot find data supporting the temperature curves in IPCC and also published in e.g. Forster, P. et al. 2007: Assessing uncertainty in climate simulation. Nature 4: 63-64.’”

That’s ONE OF his complaints, yes. But note what he actually says: that he could not find the data that supported the temperature curves used in the IPCC report and the Forster paper. The data he was looking for (if indeed it exists) would be from the data referenced by those papers, which were in HadCRUT3, not GHCN or GSOD (which, by the way, have some issues of their own, but which I would rather not get into right now).

The issue isn’t whether it is possible to use other data to construct similar curves. The issue Karlen raised is whether data supporting the results actually existed in HadCRUT3.

Quote: “Both the paper and the IPCC figure contain NEU as the highest-resolution graph. Neither attempt to make a reconstruction of just Scandinavian countries. As I pointed out in my post, if we use either GHCN or GSOD data (two mostly independent raw temperature datasets), we can reconstruct the temperature curves seen in the IPCC report. I can only conclude from the context of the emails that Karlen indeed mistook the NEU graph for a Scandinavian-only temperature reconstruction.

Agreed. Neither attempted to make a reconstruction of just Scandinavian countries. It was Eschenbach who did that, in his annual anomaly chart. And it is arguable the he should not have bothered, because he THEN compared it against data for Northern Europe, or the graph for Northern Europe. Either way, I see no valid basis for comparing two incongruous datasets.

Quote: As for Scandinavian-only temperature data, NORDKLIM, GHCN, and GSOD all give substantially similar temperature data for the region (which shows the 30s-40s as comparable to today, but just under a 1.5 C warming trend for the whole century). This shouldn’t be surprising, however, since different regions of the world do tend to show somewhat decadal trends (e.g. the U.S. has similarly warm temps in the 30s).

Perhaps that is so, but that wasn’t really the issue. The issue is whether supporting data existed in HadCRUT3. To put it in other words: the specific question was not necessarily whether AGW was causing warming, but whether the data in HadCRUT3 actually showed that.

In several places, and in several ways, Karlen called into question whether the data that was used for the Nature article and the IPCC report were appropriate. And the evidence seems to indicate very strongly that they were not. This is completely aside from whether an actual warming trend due to AGW exists. It is possible for inappropriate methods to come to correct conclusions, but it’s still bad science.

The issue with NORDKLIM is simply that for that region, Karlen did not believe it agreed with the results that Mann and CRU claimed. And you have to keep in mind that Karlen is no slouch in this area. He collaborated on several papers with CRU itself, and published many other papers on the topic of climatic shift, historical temperature records, proxies, and other topics.

Although he contributed much to the science, he has apparently decided that he does not agree with the overall conclusions. And if anybody has a right to form an opinion on the matter, he does.

He also raises valid points about the heat island data. If it was indeed left in the data, as it appears to have been, then any conclusions drawn by those reports are very likely invalid.

Again please note the distinction: I am not making any claims about AGW or the lack of it per se. The issue is whether the HadCRUT data — aside of any issues surrounding its creation — was then employed in a responsible manner.

Correction, or rather addendum. I missed this sentence: I can only conclude from the context of the emails that Karlen indeed mistook the NEU graph for a Scandinavian-only temperature reconstruction.

I understand, but I believe that when his comments are viewed as a whole, my assessment above is accurate. He actually made a number of observations, not just those, and they were all consistently aimed at challenging the HadCRU data.

@ Lonny Eachus: It is obvious you just intend to continue to dodge and evade. Until you stop trying to weasel your way out of responsibility for your own statements then there is no point discussing anything with you further. I have explained it enough times already, it seems clear to me that you understand what I am saying but can’t admit that you are wrong. I was hoping you might finally try to salvage some last shred of integrity and admit your mistakes but it is clear you have no intention of doing so. Everyone who is still commenting here has explained this to you, but you have ignored everyone. People can read what you wrote and see for themselves what makes sense and what doesn’t. Everyone who has read it besides you and has commented agreed with me. Maybe you should think about that, and at least consider the possibility that they actually noticed a legitimate flaw and there isn’t a conspiracy to attack you.

But whether you do or not, I can’t stand people who refuse to take responsibility, so until I get some indication you have learned to do so I will not respond to any more of your comments. I was hoping to have a reasonable discussion, but I can’t do so with someone who can’t stand losing under any circumstances and is willing to twist words and evade endlessly in order to avoid doing so.

A simple “I was wrong” could have ended this days ago, but you apparently can’t do that, no matter how wrong you are you seem to need to salvage some bit of victory from it no matter what the cost. There is never a simple “I’m wrong” from you, it is always “I’m wrong, but…”. Ask yourself why that is, and when you have your answer perhaps you will understand why everyone is so against you.

The only one here who is supporting you is Paul, and if Paul agreed with me on something my inclination would be to check what I wrote very carefully because that would be a strong indication I wrote something very, very wrong.

You should follow your own advice there Lonny, or you may end up looking even more foolish, just sayin’.
Admitting a mistake (or rather your ignorance of the basic science on a subject you’re supposed to know) is a start on the road to enlightenment, so well done. You will have to admit some more “mistakes” in the future if you intend to be a “one man inquiry team”.
Its nice to see that you’ve gotten married. Congratulations. I hope he doesn’t keep you awake at night screaming about Phil Plait calling him a denier!

I was completely serious. I have no intention of debating anything with you, now or ever, unless I see that you have handled your own personal problems. I tried to discuss actual issues with you, but when I looked back over what you had written earlier on this page I could clearly see, not just from what you wrote to me, but also what you have written to a number of other people, that you really have no interest in discussing actual issues, but would rather harp and insult than have a reasonable discussion about anything.

As I mentioned, I thought you had just decided to pick on me for some unknown reason, but now I see that you are actually more of an “equal opportunity” nasty person. When I saw how you replied to several people who had only stated or asked innocent (but uninformed) things, by personally attacking them, calling them idiots, and THEN mocking them, I had seen enough. I have have known more than enough people like you in the past, and I have absolutely no reason to want to deal with another. So I won’t waste my time further.

I read about half the first sentence of your last post, and that is all I intend to read. Consider yourself ignored.

@290 Bob Faulks

Get stuffed, Bob. You haven’t added anything intelligent to the conversation either, so I also have no time for you.

If someone wants to have an intelligent discussion about issues, like Zeke for example, I am still open. Otherwise, you might as well not bother addressing me at all.

Lonny, you really are a sore loser. The Black Cat sure has handed you your ass on a plate. Your problem is that you hate it when folks call you out on the copious mistakes you make that show you to be lazy (or too stupid to use a search engine) and ignorant of the basics.

“If someone wants to have an intelligent discussion about issues, like Zeke for example, I am still open. Otherwise, you might as well not bother addressing me at all.”

Translation:
If someone wants to indulge me in my one man inquiry team fantasy I’ll respond with more nitpicking. Otherwise I’m taking my ball away from the nasty skeptics and going off to sulk. BWAAAH!
Cyrus Caine, I’m still laughing at loser lonny. And saluting The Black Cat for his rational rebuttal of Lonny’s squirming diversions.

For the record, I never called anyone an “idiot”. I criticized someone else for not having a basic understanding even of what AGW is (they didn’t understand the difference between global warming and the ozone hole). But criticizing someone for not understanding a subject they claim to be critiquing is not the same thing as calling them an idiot.

Just wanted to point out that Wibjörn Karlén is retired, and way out of his former profession. He’s not a climate scientist – he’s known as a die-hard climate denier in Sweden. He has written strange things in swedish papers’ debate pages, like ‘there have been no warming since the start of the millennium’, and that as late as january this year.

lonny Eachus evaded:
“Pardon me? It’s one thing to have a link that can be found on Google or something, but you honestly expect me to go back and hunt through a large number of Phil’s blog posts for some vague “disproof” that you won’t even describe? If you want to show it to me, show it to me. But I’m not going to spend possibly hours hunting up something that may not even exist.”

It took me less than a minute to input “Bob Faulks Lonny Eachus” into google, and I got the rebuttal. Lonny can’t seem to do that because he hates being humiliated by his own ignorance. Here it is:

“Posted by BobFaulks:

#127. Lonny Eachus Says:

“What you seem to be missing here is that all of our data of the historical PAST shows no cause-effect between temperature and CO2 concentrations. Actually, that is not true either… there is a strong correlation, but it is the other way around. In the past, temperature variations were followed about 800 years later by CO2 concentrations. All the evidence we had showed that temperature drove CO2, not the other way around.
So it is the idea that CO2 can cause temperature shifts that is actually the extraordinary claim, and the claim that goes against all PAST evidence.”

Lonny, you need to do your homework before spouting off like that. If you make a habit of it, you could end up looking pretty foolish. Just sayin’.
Anyway, six minutes into this video it starts to explain the CO2 lags, and comes to the point eight minutes in.

“Did you get that? The CO2 warming theory is the extraordinary claim. The claim that has to prove itself. Not the other way around.”

“(Technically, of course, it is never possible to prove a theory completely… but they can be proven to be useful theories, if they are successful at predicting the future. That is the whole value of a theory: how well it predicts the outcome of events. So far, “CO2-driven global warming” has not predicted anything. Anything at all. Not..one..single..thing.”

There aren’t really any peer-reviewed papers as such countering the “CO2-lags warming” meme, because it is precisely what you’d predict given the consensus theory of climate.
The CO2 has to come from somewhere, right? Well, if you have warming after an ice age (google Milankovitch cycles, Lonny), eventually the permafrost starts to thaw and outgasses the CO2 that was trapped there. The released CO2 intensifies and prolongs the warming. In this case, the cause of the initial warming is increased insolation due to small changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and CO2 is a feedback that causes more warming.
Like most denialist arguments, this one winds up being a bit of an own goal. Eventually, we will warm the planet sufficiently to release the CO2 and methane now frozen in the tundra, and that will further intensify the warming, probably making it irremediable.

“Did you get that? The CO2 warming theory is the extraordinary claim. The claim that has to prove itself. Not the other way around.”

You need to learn more about CO2 too, Lonny. The situation is really quite simple. Earth is warmed by the light from the Sun, mostly in the visible spectrum. Earth cools by infra-red radiation. CO2 is transparent to visible light but absorbs infra-red light. Increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere reduces heat loss from the earth; so we get warmer. This is about as difficult or controversial as the proposition that if I drop a teacup off a roof, it will break when it hits the ground. Historically, I’ve never dropped a cup before- but so what?
We’ve known about this mechanism for more than a century. Claiming that CO2-induced warming is an extraordinary claim is, effectively, claiming that if I insulate my house and don’t turn down the heating, it’s extraordinary to claim that my house will get warmer!
Feeling foolish yet Lonny?”

Lonny did indeed need to have his error explained to him. Cyrus Caine, thanks for bringing this to light again. Lonny was hoping that he could dredge up the “Climategate”e mails again, but hates it when his own past posts are scrutinised. Very hypocritical of him.

Like Phil says: death rattle. Is Lindzen perhaps the only contrarian climate scientist with even a smidgen of credibility left? Against thousands of peer reviewed papers that make the case for human-caused global warming. 97% of scientists that are active climatologists concur that mankind is a primary cause of global warming.

Think about it. According to the deniers/contrarians/whatever, pumping *28 billion metric tonnes* of CO2, a known greenhouse gas, annually into our atmosphere has no (or negligible) effect on the biosphere? Oh really? We somehow get a free pass on this one? Sadly, reality doesn’t work like that.

Just look at the hundreds of billions of dollars annually that are at stake for the fat cats and their shareholders behind big coal and oil, and it’s no wonder they can spend a few spondoolicks here and there on fake grassroots movements (look up astroturfing, if you haven’t heard the term) to sow FUD, in a last ditch attempt to prolong Business As Usual. It’s not even about science any longer. It’s all about politics, trying to maintain the status quo.

I for one am tired of arguing the science behind climate change with denialists who have nothing to bring to the discussion but a thinly disguised political agenda. None of these threads ever go anywhere, because they can’t, by definition. Yeah, we say we do it for the benefit of the fence sitters, but that’s like, what, maybe 2% of the people that visit these blogs? My SIWOTI jones is strong, but a brick wall is a brick wall.

On a more upbeat note… why can’t we start a concerted effort to put some serious research money into renewable sources of energy? It is the obvious way forward. Science made it clear that we were destroying the ozone layer with CFCs and we collectively did something about it. Problem solved. Granted, that was a good bit easier than tackling the AGW problem, but it’s in the same vein.

Yes, renewables are a lot more expensive at the moment than coal and oil. But unless we make it worthwhile for companies to research ways to make them more cost effective, it’s not going to happen all by itself. A good start would be to slowly wind down subsidies for coal and oil, and divert the savings into developing truly viable renewables. Just sayin’…

You didn’t really do your own homework, did you? You are arguing against yourself, and there is plenty of easily available EVIDENCE indicating that you are wrong.

Over the years Wibjörn Karlén has written and collaborated on numerous papers regarding historical temperature data, tree ring proxies, CO2, and other topics directly related to AGW. I linked to just a few of those papers above in 265, and there are many more. All peer-reviewed, and published in reputable scientific journals. So he IS in fact a climate scientist (regardless of his old specialty).

But here’s the thing: Karlen also worked with, and collaborated on papers with, Briffa, Jones, and CRU itself! I found 4 of them in just a few minutes on Google. I am sure if you actually look, you can find more papers by him. Maybe even more done with CRU. So at the very least, it is certain that he worked with, and was familiar with, THE VERY SCIENCE THEY WERE DOING THERE.

It’s all right there on Google, and as I say, a few papers linked to above. Just go look. If you don’t want to go look, fine, but then you don’t get to say the evidence isn’t there.

If Karlen were a crank, why was he collaborating on at least 4 papers with CRU? Do the people at CRU allow cranks to collaborate on their papers?

You people really are funny. In actuality, you are calling him a crank simply because he disagrees. And of course that’s going to get him a “denialist” label. Don’t be silly.

But what amuses me most is that you have kept trying to attack the people, rather than the issues. Don’t you know any better by now? Have you learned yet what an ad hominem attack is? Or is it just a meaningless word you throw at people you have also labeled “denialists”?

And no, I’m not feeling foolish at all, Bob. The point I made about those old comments of mine obviously went right over your head. I have made any apologies I am going to make for statements of mine from long ago, taken out of their context.

All this is, is another form of personal attack. Several of you people have been acting as though you are desperate to prove me wrong on anything. Anything at all that you can get your hands on. I’m just responding in the manner that I feel such childish behavior deserves. My other option is to just ignore you completely, and only respond to people who want to have an intelligent discussion, rather than attack others with whom they disagree.

I accidentally caught this when I was reading something else, or else I wouldn’t be replying at all. I probably shouldn’t anyway.

Quote: For the record, I never called anyone an ‘idiot’. I criticized someone else for not having a basic understanding even of what AGW is (they didn’t understand the difference between global warming and the ozone hole). But criticizing someone for not understanding a subject they claim to be critiquing is not the same thing as calling them an idiot”.

This is disingenuous at best. No, you did not literally call them idiots. Nor did you literally call them morons. But under the circumstances I think your meanings were pretty clear. I am not going to say anything more lest I be accused of “mind reading”, myself.

I could go on, but I won’t. I probably should not have responded at all and henceforth I will not. I have no reason to keep repeating myself. But I think your meanings and your behavior speak for themselves, and will be pretty clear to others who read them.

It’s a shame these discussions always devolve into insults and ad hominem attacks. At the risk of becoming a participant, it strikes me that some of the warmists above subscribe to the Keith Olberman school of debate. As to the subject at hand Lonny Eachus made the salient point in 35. If the behaviour revealed in the emails is acceptable in academic communities like PSU the science is in deep trouble indeed. Anyone commenting here who has not read them does not really understand that climategate was about junk science, not whether or not AGW might exist. Here: http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/ is an admittedly critical analysis however the emails are reproduced in there entirety.

Lonny Eachus, get out of your mom’s basement and get some fresh air. then you might realise that you are being judgemental about scientists and the posters here are playing you at your own game.

“I could go on, but I won’t. I probably should not have responded at all and henceforth I will not. I have no reason to keep repeating myself. But I think your meanings and your behavior speak for themselves, and will be pretty clear to others who read them.”

Your meanings, which change to prevent you being shown to be ignorant, and your behaviour (which is quite frankly worthy of an 10 year old) tell us that you will try to evade the fact that you’ve been shown to be a BSer.

“As to the subject at hand Lonny Eachus made the salient point in 35.”

You mean this little diatribe?
“If nothing else, “climategate” was valuable precisely in that it showed that the particular “accepted practices” adhered to were shoddy at best. Rather than calling this a “victory” for “warmists”, scientists should hang their heads in shame for allowing such questionable and downright half-assed practices to become “accepted” at all.”

And the denialists have a whole host of sloppy researchers and amateur climate scientists like Monckton, master of mistakes. Compared to them the “warmists” are more than efficient.

If your friend Lonny had any devastating critique of the climategate molehill he should have contacted the inquiry team and let them have the information, but he doesn’t, so all he can do is cast about for something that looks like a killer criticism. I think he’s still posting here in an attempt to save face for some of the stupid stuff he’s written in earlier posts. He labours under the illusion that he is making a serious contribution to an inquiry that has already finished, and is trying desperately to convert Phil Plait to the deniers’ creed of conspiracy and ignorance.

Quote: “Lonny Eachus, get out of your mom’s basement and get some fresh air. then you might realise that you are being judgemental about scientists and the posters here are playing you at your own game.”

That’s nice. Very scientific. Pardon the sarcasm, but sarcasm is all that comment really deserves. I will answer some of your comment anyway, just because I am such a nice guy:

It’s not my game. It’s theirs. I was not attacking THEM rather than discussing the issues, they were doing that, and I was responding in exactly the way I felt that behavior deserved. I made every effort to be polite and talk about actual talking points. They did their best to prevent me.

I made no comments about any scientists that I did not have evidence to back up.

And you are doing here the same thing that those others did: attacking me, rather than the points I raised here over the last week or so. Tell me: why do you and some of these others seem so allergic to actually talking about important scientific issues that challenge the validity of your “side” in this?

Quote: “And the denialists have a whole host of sloppy researchers and amateur climate scientists like Monckton, master of mistakes. Compared to them the “warmists” are more than efficient.”

Quote: “Angus Martin, have fun tracking down the backers of these papers. It won’t surprize you to see the same oil and tobacco companies behind most of them.”

Where are your points? Where is your data and your evidence? Why are you attacking the people rather than the things they are saying? Even after several recent posts about ad hominem attacks, you and others have persisted! Have you, and some others here, learned nothing at all? I am not claiming you haven’t, I am just asking. Because I have not seen any evidence that you have and I genuinely wonder.

No less than 10 of those papers were authored or co-authored by Wibjörn Karlén, a respected and well-known climate scientist (as shown above). He co-authored at least 4 papers with CRU researchers. Once again I must ask: do the people at CRU co-author papers with idiots or crackpots? You can’t have that both ways.

Thanks for proving my point once again, and for these papers, a few of which I had been looking for.

So where is your devastating evidence of a conspiracy by scientists to fake a global warming trend, then Lonny? Because all I see is you whining and not responding with any EVIDENCE. Very scientific (thats sarcasm by the way).

#310. This being the Wibjorn Karlen who is retired, and is part of SEPP that believe:

•”The earth’s atmosphere has not warmed over the past 20 years.”
•”The last century is not the warmest in the last 1000 years.”
•”Man’s use of fossil fuels has not had a perceptible effect on global climate.”
•”Even if the earth were to warm slightly, and atmospheric CO2 were to increase, the effects would be mostly beneficial.”
•”The only support for serious future warming comes from theoretical climate models – but they give only imperfect simulations of the real atmosphere, are not validated by actual observations, and are incapable of making valid predictions.”

All of these assumptions have been dealt with on this blog in various posts. so Karlen, in his dotage can be wrong. Especially when so many up to date working scientists reject the above due to the scientific evidence.

Your article is hogwash. Quite simply, the emails speak for themselves. It is self-evident and undeniable that Mann and the rest of his crew engaged in misconduct. There is no need for, and no value provided by, “expert” investigations. (Each of them, in sum: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.) Expert opinions are only of value when the facts are not understandable by a lay person. Here, the malfeasance of Mann and crew are readily understandable. John P. Costella recites the emails and the facts for those with open minds:

You can have a million experts state that nothing of significance happened in NYC on September 11th but it won’t change what we know happened and saw with our own eyes. Similarly, we know what’s in the Climategate emails. For any person with a shred of honesty and intellectual integrity, Climategate is game, set, match. Of course you defend his actions because Discover is part of the problem, just another echochamber of bias and prejudice.

You may have been justified in believing global warming before the emails. But at this point, you are identical in my mind to the Flat Earthers and the Intelligent Design crowd. I don’t question the sincerity of your belief, but you believe things without regard to facts, truth and science. Your refusal to consider facts when they conflict with your ideology has brought disrepute upon yourself and, sadly, upon all of science. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I repeat: This is the same Wibjorn Karlen (pardon lack of diacritical marks, but this is the way you spelled it yourself) who COLLABORATED with CRU on some very influential papers. Does CRU collaborate with crackpots? You can’t have that both ways: he is either competent enough to contribute significantly to CRU’s work, or he isn’t. Apparently he is.

Yet you vilify him for coming to different conclusions. Well, again I have to point out that this smells of hypocrisy. If you accept the legitimacy of the people at CRU, then you also have to accept the legitimacy of Karlen. There is no third option.

Further, you are essentially calling him a nut (or confused, or something), and assert that his points have been addressed on this blog. Talk about arrogance! But even that aside, and even if he were wrong about those things (and I am not saying he is), that does not invalidate his points about the CRU data being used inappropriately for that paper and for the IPCC Assessment.

Even if you think he’s a nutcase, that doesn’t matter. Even people considered to be nutcases can be right. Take Copernicus for example.

If you are not going to specifically refute the points he made that I brought up, you might as well be talking to the air. Move along, nothing to see here.

Lonny, you are famous for your reading comprehension fails and straw manning. I never called him a crackpot, but you wanted me to, so you straw manned me to do so.
Karlen in his dotage can be wrong, especially since those who are saying so are scientists currently working in the field of climate change and not ancient vatican theologians.

“If you are not going to specifically refute the points he made that I brought up, you might as well be talking to the air. Move along, nothing to see here.”

That ego of yours needs kerbing. You are not a moderator, just another denier with delusions of grandeur and a lack of knowledge that is painful to see. You also fail to see that you yourself have nothing to contribute but a show of your own ignorance of science and your complete lack of evidence to refute AGW.
May I suggest that you get an education in climate science before you spout off like an irate child. It may save you from looking very ignorant; jus’ sayin’

Penny… I hadn’t visited this page in close to 2 years, but I just noticed your final comment, about a year ago.

First, I didn’t “straw man” you into calling anyone a crackpot. I *ASKED* if you thought they did business with crackpots. Those are very different things. I’m not sure you understand what “straw man” means.

But THEN… and this is pretty laughable… in the very next sentence YOU go on to refer to Karlen “in his dotage”. Haha. Out of one side of your mouth one second, then the other side the next, eh?

But the reason it isn’t straw man is that it is actually quite relevant to the subject I was discussing. If you don’t think Karlen is competent, then why were the folks at Hadley Centre and CRU collaborating with him on scientific papers?

I repeat: Karlen has produced many PEER-REVIEWED papers on climate, and such things as tree-ring proxies, some of which were collaborations with CRU itself. If THEY thought his judgment were skewed, then I have to ask again: why were they collaborating on papers with him? And if they didn’t think that, then where do you get off making that assumption, when the very authorities you are relying on had enough faith in his judgment to so collaborate?

You are actually contradicting yourself.

Quote: “That ego of yours needs kerbing. You are not a moderator, just another denier with delusions of grandeur and a lack of knowledge that is painful to see.”

I wasn’t pretending to be a moderator. I had *SPECIFICALLY* asked for refutation of any of the points Karlen made. You did not even attempt to do so. Therefore, I am not interested in your personal attacks. And I wasn’t telling OTHER people to move along, I was asking YOU to, because you did not address even one of the issues I raised.

Since you couldn’t even come up with one valid refutation of ANY of the points I made about the climate data, I don’t think it is me who needs to do any mirror-gazing about knowledge or ego.

Lonny… I sure do understand what a strawman argument is. You’re a master of the art of creating them, as you’ve demonstrated many times. There is a difference between being a crackpot, which is what you took my reference to dotage to mean, and being old and out of the loop of practicing science, and publishing relevant up to date papers.
And its pretty laughable that you disregard the facts that Karlen is getting on a bit, and isn’t a practicing scientist now. He is in his dotage, being 75 , and being shown to be wrong by copious amounts of PEER REVIEWED modern research by younger scientists, actually working in the field.
Since you can’t come up with ANY valid refutations of modern AGW science, and don’t even understand the basics, as others have demonstrated (BobFaulks for one, but there are many more) I guess you’ll be following your own advice now, and not embarass yourself further. Jus’ sayin’